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Location: In Thy presence is fulness of joy... Psa 16:11
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I remember when our family began to understand a little more accurately the history of the U.S. We were appalled. It didn't send us away from the Bible, it sent us to our Bibles. Made us rethink our ideas of patriotism, "just wars", and other such things promoted in Augustinian religious circles (ie: Roman Catholic, modern Baptist, Lutheran, Calvinistic, etc.).
When we read how Quakers, Anabaptists, early Baptists and others were fined, beaten, imprisoned, required to pay tithe taxes to the State churches of the early colonies, have their buildings (which weren't 501C3, by the way) confiscated, and sometimes be put to death for their faith...we saw what an intolerant country the US was at the start. Along with this, before, during and after the Revolutionary War, the "praying Indian" villages(the nonresistant Christian Indians who would not bear arms and fight because of their Bible-based beliefs) were raided. Native men, women and children were put to death viciously by Colonial forces.
Over the centuries, people who were non-violent because of their faith were put to death by US forces because they could not--by conscience--fight in any war (all the way up through WWII and beyond). By the Viet Nam war there was some concessions made for "peace churches" (ie: Quakers, Anabaptists, etc.), but not necessarily if you held religious beliefs and were not part of these groups.
There have been so many examples of honest living, strongly Bible-believing (but not political activist) Christians and other religions that have received harsh, unrelenting treatment at the hands of US political forces.
Fanaticism takes charge by force. It is fascism; violent...wrong! Be it religious fanaticism to "take back this country for Christ"; or anti-religious political fanaticism that strikes down everyone who believes and follows the Bible. Religious intolerance being right...? That is easy!
How about human sacrifice? That is a real religious issue -- both past and present.
How about religious rites that include prostitution -- and those "temples" are usually peopled with young girls and boys who have been ripped from their families, or sold by very poor families who cannot afford to feed them?
How about burning or burying alive the wife of the husband who died? That is an ancient custom of several religions.
How about the use of hallucinogenic drugs (ie: mushrooms, peyote, etc.)? These can mess up the brain, and cause the user wild side effects that are dangerous to themselves and possibly to others.
How about cannibalism? This practice has had far and wide implications around the world.
Christian missionaries have worked to eliminate such practices at least among those who converted to the faith. Their work was primarily preaching the gospel, feeding the hungry, giving medical attention to the sick, and teaching new Christians how to live according to the Bible.
As a result, dangerous, violent "religious" practices were greatly reduced, and even eliminated. Further, their converts were generally peace-loving, law-abiding, hard-working Christian people. They weren't looking to build their kingdoms on earth, they weren't looking to hold power over the world. They were simply living for Christ in the way He taught and lived. I'd say that is a positive influence! Research yourself: The Life of Samuel Kirkland Missionary to the Indians, by Samuel K. Lothrop (pub by Little & Brown, 1848; Google book)
Others: John Eliot, missionary to the Algonquin; William Carey's work in India; John Paton's ministry in New Hebrides; J. Hudson Taylor's work in China; Amy Carmichael--India; Patricia St. Johnand her brother Farnham St. Johnin Morroco ...on and on examples go. These and countless others gave freely of Christ in both word and deed. Generally they were poor, lived like those they served, and did not serve to make a name for themselves. While at times they tried to influence the local government for the protection of the people, they did not try to take it over. They were people of spiritual greatness; not seeking a place of honor or esteem on earth.
So what's the threat from us? What's our gameplan to destroy America?
Oh, I think you are divided. You probably wouldn't be in agreement with the following fundamentalist idea, but you are still basically in their camp. So why don't you tell us?
Quote:
Since 1974, when Bob Jones University evoked religious freedom to defend its racially discriminatory admissions practices in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the radical right has turned with increasing frequency to faith-based arguments to promote its policies of exclusion and intolerance. Their efforts to politicize theology can be crass and unsophisticated, and they regularly trespass beyond the parameters of the Establishment Clause.
But there is equal if not greater culpability on the progressive left, which has marched itself right out of the conversation on religion and faith under the flag of secularization.
By insisting on a rigid “wall of separation” between religion and public life, liberal America surrendered its place at the table and has been forced instead into a defensive posture as it fields charge after charge of “waging war” on the faithful.----
If moderate voices are not part of the larger discourse on religious morality in America, it’s not because conservatives have pushed them out (although they're more than happy to see them gone.) They retreated willingly. And their silence is problematic for a number of reasons, not least of all because it has ceded the framing of religious discourse in America to a small group of radicals who, as Richard John Neuhaus noted in his influential 1984 book, The Naked Public Square, want “to enter the public arena making public claims on the basis of private truths.”
These are the people who’ve managed to turn baking a cake into a faith-based initiative; and they are filling a void left by more reasonable believers, who, despite their larger numbers, have adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the issue of religious ethics.
The result is that instead of engaging in nuanced discussions on the ethical lessons to be drawn from religious tradition and their relevancy today, we’re treated to zero-sum debates on the literal meaning of texts that are thousands of years old and require informed interpretive effort to relate to a modern context, if they can be related at all.
We liberals have disengaged from the battle of hearts and minds much to the delight of many fundamentalists. But guess what--we don't have a battle plan called the "Gay Agenda" which fundamentals promote (falsely, I might add, due to the lie inserted into the Congressional Record nearly three decades ago).
There is no doubt of a fundamentalist agenda---and it is frightening beyond belief. Those of us with moderate or liberal views must stand in opposition to fundamentalists of every religion.
Tolerance is still far from the shores of 21st Century America.
Serra built the first concentration camp, I mean mission, in San Diego in 1769. Well before the USA existed.
And it is part of ythe history of the geograpical area known as the US. But grant the exception..... why ignore having native faith and traditions "beaten out" of indigenous children at San Carlos and oyther such schools in the United States?
And it is part of ythe history of the geograpical area known as the US. But grant the exception..... why ignore having native faith and traditions "beaten out" of indigenous children at San Carlos and oyther such schools in the United States?
I'm not ignoring it, Nate..... hence my referral to concentration camps. I simply had those dates drilled into my brain in the 4th grade by the state of California and can repeat them, like some weird brain pop-up, 50 years later. Like all forth-graders In CA I made a mission from a shoe box and paper mache. My education on the treatment of native peoples at the missions and what happened in Indian Schools came much later.
Oh, I think you are divided. You probably wouldn't be in agreement with the following fundamentalist idea, but you are still basically in their camp. So why don't you tell us?
You made the wacko claim. Why or how are we a threat?
You missed the part about using faith based arguments to promote policies of intolerance? But I agree with you: there are far to many reasonable people who see through the smoke screen for that to be an actual threat.
You made the wacko claim. Why or how are we a threat?
Well, it is not a wacko claim. Do you deny that it is your RELIGIOUS intention to force an end to abortion of any kind and that you actively support politicians who do the same? (despite the fact that the country is divided 50-50 on this issue)
Do you deny that it is your RELIGIOUS intention to deny the same civil marriage to same sex couples and that you actively support politicians who do the same? (despite the fact that MORE than 50% of the nation now supports same sex marriage)
Do you deny that it is your RELIGIOUS intention that anyone who wishes to deny commerce (selling from a business) to a {fill in the blank--such as "same sex" or "muslim" or "black" or "Indian"} person for their religious beliefs should be allowed to do so--and that you are actively working to get politicians to do the same?
Do you deny that it is your RELIGIOUS intention to put the ten commandments on every courthouse lawn and return CHRISTIAN prayers to schools and that you actively support politicians who do the same?
And even if you deny some or all of these intolerant viewpoints, guess what? You are in bed with those who do. And a man is certainly seen as a part of the company he keeps.
Religious intolerance scarcely existed before the rise of monotheism. Ancient polytheistic religions worshipped numerous gods but never involved doctrinally precise professions of faith. There was no such matters as orthodoxy or heresy. The gods were mutually tolerant of one another, and the worshippers were eclectic, moving from one shrine or cult to the next without the slightest feeling of inconsistency. In Tarsus, where Paul grew up, as in all the towns of the ancient world outside of Judea, the gods were not jealous. They insisted that they must be offered punctiliously all honors due to them, but they did not worry about what honors were paid to other gods or men. Much later, Attila the Hun allowed members of his horde to follow whichever gods they wished, so long as they didn’t interfere in each other’s freedom of worship. Attila was more a model for religious tolerance than fundamentalists in any religion are today.
I'm not ignoring it, Nate..... hence my referral to concentration camps. I simply had those dates drilled into my brain in the 4th grade by the state of California and can repeat them, like some weird brain pop-up, 50 years later. Like all forth-graders In CA I made a mission from a shoe box and paper mache. My education on the treatment of native peoples at the missions and what happened in Indian Schools came much later.
It is well known that there was a religious aspect to the brutal treatment of native Americans. A relatively recent book, Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 304 pp.. 978-0-8078-7118-8, by John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal highlights religious intolerance in the U.S. both past and present. From a review:
Quote:
Corrigan and Neal’s volume vibrantly illustrates the sometimes conspicuous, but more often insidious ways, in which religious intolerance has shaped American life. The early chapters are especially adept at tracing the theme of the biblically cursed Amalekites through the brutal efforts to “blot out” Mormonism and traditional Native American worship. Along the way, Corrigan and Neal emphasize violence and violent rhetoric as constitutive and mutually reinforcing elements of intolerant white Protestant institutions and cultural forms. The later chapters focus more centrally on the links between race, gender, and religion.
The failure of the book is in the fact that it focuses solely on the United States when religious intolerance has been a unique phenomenon arising out of the Abrahamic religions and has been heightened in intensity by fundamentalists of all those faiths.
There were towns in New England that didn't tolerate the presence of Puritans, too, OP. Puritans would get run out of town, and would either found their own towns, or go where other Puritans dominated.
Don't forget religious intolerance of Native American spirituality. Native Americans still don't have full exercise of their spiritual traditions, and the Supreme Court doesn't support them in the cases that reach the court. It sometimes takes an act of Congress to remedy the damage done to Native religious rights by the Supreme Court. The US Forest Service does not respect Native American sacred sites, and has been known to build non-essential access roads through areas used for prayer for hundreds of years. Native Americans weren't allowed to have their holy men come and provide services in prison until the mid-1960's sometime. They had to go to federal court to get that right, something every other prisoner took for granted. And in recent years, that right has been undermined.
Government regulation is particularly pronounced in the area of tribal religions in the United States from 1892 until 1934. For example, the time, place and manner of Native access to tribal religious sites located on federal land are regulated by federal agencies. It is far more complicated, difficult and arbitrary for Native Americans to pray than can be imagined by most people who have free, unregulated access to their churches and other places of worship. In addition, the use and possession of sacred objects (such as eagle feathers, peyote and animal parts) by Indian for religious purposes is comprehensively regulated by a host of federal, and sometimes state, laws and regulations. For Indians who are locked away behind prison walls in America's most totalitarian of communities, their practice of religion as a civil liberty is severely restricted and heavily regulated-apparently even more than that of prisoners of other faiths-as shown in the records of many Congressional hearings between 1978-1992.
16. Indigenous peoples in the United States have the highest incarceration rate of any racial or
ethnic group.11 A 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics report stated that indigenous peoples are
incarcerated at 38 percent the national rate.12 As of 2011, 29,700 indigenous peoples were
incarcerated in the United States.13 These indigenous prisoners depend upon their freedom to
engage in traditional religious practices for their rehabilitation as well as their ability to maintain
their identity as indigenous peoples. Put differently, “for some Native American prison inmates,
walking the red road in the white man’s iron house is the path to salvation, the way of beauty,
and the only road to rehabilitation and survival.”14
17. Traditional religious practices that further indigenous peoples’ rehabilitation include,
without limitation, the practice of sweatlodge, talking circle, blessing way, Change of Seasons,
pipe, drumming and pow wow ceremonies, and the related use of sacred traditional items such as
beadwork, pipes, feathers, hides, bones and teeth, prayer fans, hand-drums and sticks, rattles and
medicine bags, and sacred traditional medicines including sage, sweet grass, cedar, copal, bitter
root, osha root, kinnikinnick, and tobacco. These traditional religious practices facilitate
indigenous peoples’ spiritual rehabilitation, or what indigenous theologian and scholar Vine
Deloria, Jr. called “spiritual problem solving.”
[...]
22. In recent years, states throughout the United States have issued new regulations curtailing
the ability of indigenous prisoners to possess religious items, participate in religious ceremonies,
and otherwise engage in traditional practices. Further, changes in regulations continue absent
meaningful consultation with indigenous peoples.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 02-13-2015 at 10:26 PM..
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