A quote found on the above site:

1785

7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest luster; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.

Excerpt from James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, June 1785

And here is "A Table of the Religious Affiliations of American Founders", with the qualification:

"Additionally, we should issue a word of caution concerning the vagaries of historical research. First, it's sometimes very difficult to determine a person's religion; historians can only go by the documents people leave behind, and many founders never wrote or said much about their religious beliefs. Additionally, church affiliation is an imprecise way of determining a person's beliefs; some religious people rarely attended church, only a small percentage of church attenders in the late 1700s were actually church members, and some church members were not particularly religious. George Washington, for example, was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church, but he was neither deeply religious, nor particularly Christian (most historians count him as a Deist). Similarly, just because two people are of the same relgion doesn't mean they see the world the same way. Both Jerry Falwell and Jesse Jackson, for example, are Baptists, but you'd be on shakey ground in claiming that their common religion implies anything like political similarity. These vagaries aside, this table should be a substantial help to anyone interested in getting a handle on the religious beliefs of America's founders."

Also relevant is this quote:

"Most of these men were born and grew up during a time when most of the colonies had either a single established religion or multiple establishments. Most of these men lived under a system, at some point or other, whereby they were required by law to support religion in general or a declared denomination. They were also frequently required by law to declare a denomination. Most if not all of the men on the list were politicians of some sort, holding office, etc and most colonies/states, at least early on still, had religious tests.

(5) What a man might "pledge" with regards to religion and what he actually believed can be worlds apart. The men of your list would not be the first group of men who said and did one thing for public and said and did another thing in private.

PART II

The founders, no matter how you define that term, were a mixed bunch as far as their religious beliefs, practices etc,

Some were orthodox Christians that were very into religion.
Some were orthodox Christians who were rather indifferent to religion
Some were Deist (Non-orthodox)
Some were Quakers (Non-orthodox)
Some were Catholic (Considered non-orthodox by most Protestant types who were orthodox)
Some were Unitarian (Non-orthodox)
Some probably were closet atheists or "infidels"
Some began as one thing and later moved into other areas of thinking and beliefs...

Anywhere from four to six of the first United States Presidents would disqualify as "orthodox" Christians, as that term was understood then."

Another interesting quote:

" Second, the contributions of religion, especially Protestantism, to the shaping of American society must be put into clearer perspective. In the generation that produced the Constitution, only about ten percent of the population were church members, and in 1800 there were fewer churches relative to population than at any other time before or since.

Source of Information:

Religion & Constitutional Government in the United States, A Historical Overview with Sources. John E. Semonche, Signet Books Carrboro, N.C. (1985) pp 30"

Another:

"Eventually deism spread to early colonial America as well. The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica noted:

By the end of the 18th century, Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and upper class Americans.... The first three presidents of the United States also held deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence.

Source of Information:

Encyclopaedia Britannica s.v. “Religious and Spiritual Belief, Systems of,” (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.), (1997, 26:569)."

Another:

"As President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he was friendly in his attitude toward Christian values. However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary.... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative. George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian. In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout Deist--just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected.

Source of Information:

Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 174-175.)"

Another:

"

William Lee Miller, who has made a special study of the role of religion in the nation's founding, summarized the conclusion of that study in these striking words:

Did "religious freedom" for Jefferson and Madison extend to atheists? Yes. To agnostics, unbelievers, and pagans? Yes. To heretics and blasphemers and the sacrilegious? Yes. To "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohametan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination?" Yes. To Papists? Yes. To "irreligion"? Yes. To people who want freedom from religion? Yes. To people who want freedom against religion?

Yes.(9)

Source of Information:

(9) William Lee Miller, "The Ghost of Freedoms Past," in The Washington Post National Weekly Edition (13 October 1886), p. 23. ]"

And, classically, the Treaty of Tripoli, 1796,1806, in which it is stated:

" ARTICLE 11.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Think we could get that one passed in today's Congress?

It's kind of "both are true". Yes, the Framers were msotly religious (but not universally). Yes, they worried about sectarian strife and so on. So one could argue, if not win the argument, that we are a Christian nation. The counter-argument remains that the Constitution says nothing about God.

I look at the separation requirement as equivalent to the "All men are created equal" statement as a surprisingly fruitful logical construction. Just like taking the "eqaul" concept seriously inevitably expands it to all sentient creatures, the 1st Amendment implies more than the Framers intended, perhaps.

Therefore we do not need to divine the original intent. Certainly no one still tries to argue that since the Framers were not thinking of women, or slaves, or even Germans (Franklin), we should not extend rights to those people. Forget the Framers, just consider the consequences of excluding religion as opposed to incorporating it within government.

John, you write:
"What is clear is that when they spoke of freedom of religion, what the Founders had in mind was the freedom to choose among Christian denominations; or, for the more broad-minded, to choose to reject Christianity, and believe nothing."

I agree with your criticism of Kramnick and Moore, who barely write about the many Christian nationalist founders, but your statement above isn't correct -- there was plenty of rhetoric at the time about Jews, and some about Muslims and Hindus.

Regardless, what the founders anticipated or didn't anticipate doesn't matter -- "original intent" is a hopeless cause and irrelevant to the practical working of a democratic republic.

To a Puritan in New England, a Catholic in Maryland was just as foreign as a Hindu....probably worse! (Scary papist stuff!) I find the whole topic as being covered here (not just on this thread) quite simplistic--example: how can one even talk about the influence of 18th century American religious culture without mentioning things like "The Great Awakening"? One thing is sure, every religious group here had a history of persecution, the faithful may not have known that history, but their leaders did...even Anglicans. It wasn't that they cared about "religious freedom" for others, they just didn't want to end up being persecuted. The idea: there's plenty enough land for you folks over there if you don't like our religion; go over there, do your own thing, don't tell us what to do, and we'll do the same for you.

I should also mention that we ended up as a Federation of colonies/states partly because people in some of those states wanted to be able to enact morality laws in agreement with the majority religious culture in those states. (New York was the place to go then as now if you wanted wicked money worshipping secularism! :-)) The interpretation of separation of church and state "as meant by the founders" therefore depends on how federalist your interpretation is. Reminder: we fought a civil war over federal rule of law.

I do believe that the way we think of separation of church and state now evolved from people practicing it and finding the benefits as they went along. They didn't, couldn't see the full wisdom of what they were trying out.

Therefore we do not need to divine the original intent. Certainly no one still tries to argue that since the Framers were not thinking of women, or slaves, or even Germans (Franklin), we should not extend rights to those people.

Not sure about Germans (?) but then why admend the Constitution to free slaves and let women vote?

The Constitution's ban on "religious tests for office" sounds quaint to our ears, almost like its ban on bills of attainder and its discussion of "letters of marque and reprisal". But such tests were once universal. And at the time their elimination was an act of radicalism: it meant Catholics could serve in the government! When a liberal British government attempted that reform at roughly the same time there were widespread riots in protest and King George himself put a stop to the measure, which was not revived for another 50 years in Great Britain. In some ways allowing Catholics equal political rights was about as radical and unpopular as gay marraige is today.

Here's some research on the question.

Only Jackson, Polk, and Buchanan of the first 17 Presidents belonged to sects (Methodist and Presbyterian) which might be accepted by contemporary conservative Christians. They are not friendly to Episcopals, and not just because of gay issues. The Episcopals (like Lutherans and Catholics) are not reborn churches, but churches you were born into.

"I don't think our founders were anti-religion or anti-christian by any stretch of the imagination."

Go read some of their quotes. They may not have been anti-religion - although some definitely were - but quite a few were anti-Christian - especially in the sense of being against the clergy, if not against the ethics of Jesus.

Thomas Jefferson has a very well-known quote explicitly about that.

I just looked up an article about it. Here is the context of the Jefferson Memorial quote that most people think is a religious expression because it is out of context:

"One of his most well known quotes is carved into the stone of the awe-inspiring Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man."

Modern religious leaders who aspire to political power often cite it as proof that Jefferson was a Bible-thumping Christian.

What's missing from the Jefferson memorial (and almost all who cite the quote), however, is the context of that statement, the letter and circumstance from which it came.

When Jefferson was Vice President, just two months before the election of 1800 in which he would become President, he wrote to his good friend, the physician Benjamin Rush, who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian. Here, in a most surprising context, we find the true basis of one of Jefferson's most famous quotes:

"DEAR SIR, - ... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten," Jefferson wrote, noting that he knew to discuss the topic would add fuel to the fires of electoral politics swirling all around him. "I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry poets] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.

"The delusion ...on the [First Amendment] clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as being elected President], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion.""

A further quote which is especially applicable to the issues under discussion here today:

" In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."

The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

"Sir Matthew Hale [a conservative advocate for church/state "cooperation"] lays it down in these words," wrote Jefferson to Cooper: "'Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.'"

But, Jefferson rebuts in his letter, it couldn't be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd.

"We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is," wrote Jefferson. "...In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are."

In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.

"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land."

It was a long-running topic of agreement between Jefferson and John Adams, who, on September 24, 1821, wrote to Jefferson noting their mutual hope that America would embrace a purely secular, rational view of what human society could become:

"Hope springs eternal," wrote Adams of the preachers trying to take over government. "Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans expect another prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not what."

But, Adams noted in that letter to Jefferson, the hope for a positive future for America was - in his mind and Jefferson's - grounded in rationality and government, not in religion. "You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and vast amelioration in the condition of mankind," he wrote. "Our faith may be supposed by more rational arguments than any of the former."

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a June 5, 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, "Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground [than the foundation of the Ten Commandments]. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts." "

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

I DO agree, however, that there needs to be a TWO-pronged approach to refuting Christian Nationalism:

1) Reject the revisionist history as propaganda. (This has value in itself - it exposes the opposition at liars.)
2) Reject the concept itself on rational grounds.

[3)In fact, I go further than that - the entire concept of Christianity and religion per se should be rejected. But that's not going to get anywhere until someone educates the US population in how to reason.]

 War on Christmas anyone?  

Yes Jefferson and Franklin jump to mind as 2 who were very anti-religion. I have read alot of Jefferson's writings on the subject and there is no uncertainty where he stands. Madison wasn't a fan of organized religion either but just not as hostile as Jefferson. But there were others who opposed it and were more neutral on the subject...centrists, lol?

I always enjoy reading exerpts from Jefferson's writings thanks for posting them transhuman...

I got the German thing from some book on the period; supposedly Franklin wondered if they were human.

Good point about amendments. They were done essentially to rub the point in, where it suffered from controversy over interpretation.

The problem is when the language's meaning in comtemporary terms clashes with earlier usage, like "men". Is anyone still arguing what that word now means in the Constitution?

 Let's start with the nuttiest part of this argument, that when we say "Christianity" we don't have to be actually talking about, you know, religion: "Our founders were largely Protestant Christians (by culture if not always by observance). They were men who assumed that America was so pervasively Protestant that a religious test was beside the point. " 

Oh, so what you’re saying is they had a Christian lifestyle?  What does it mean to be a Christian by culture?  So if an atheist like me thinks there are a great many moral precepts in Christianity that are a good idea, tries to treat others with kindness and love, avoids killing and coveting as best I can: you can count me as a Christian?

Then we get a discussion about how 18th century America wasn’t really diverse, by 21st century standards.  Well, gee whiz, they thought slavery was OK and women didn’t need a right to vote.  If you want to talk about history, talk about it in context.  Back in 18th century American, being, say, an Episcopalian versus a Methodist was a big deal.  Even as late as the middle of the 19th century there were bitter disputes between Protestant sects, and sub-sects, such as splits within the Baptists.  Taken on it’s own terms, religious belief in early America was a lot more fractured in to a greater number of sharply divided groups than today. 

But the weakest logic here lies in the way that a belief in God is conflated with being a Christian.  Plenty of Americans around the time this nation was founded believed in God, but didn’t buy in to the whole Christ mythology, and weren’t Christians.  They were called Deists.

Those who were Deists and not Christians include many of the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Ben Franklin.   I somehow doubt they thought they were founding a Christian nation, and it’s pretty hard to imagine our history turning out the same without these pivotal figures.

Deism is largely unknown today, as advances in knowledge thanks to a little thing called science, so we tend to read material from the era of America’s founding without the proper context.  When we read George Washington talk of “Providence” or a “Supreme Being” frequent themes we see in his writings, we see it through the modern lens that divides people in to Christians and agnostics (or outright atheists, such as myself).

But an 18th century reader would see merely a reference to a belief in God, and see a Deist, not a Christian.  In fact, many take Washington’s writings, especially in later life, as proof George Washington was not a Christian.  I don’t think there is enough evidence to definitively conclude either way, but at the least, it illustrates how one cannot assume a person of that age was “by culture” a Christian.

That leads to an artificial dichotomy, an easy straw man to knock down in the rush to a false conclusion :  conflate Christianity with any belief in God, and then it becomes easy to disprove that founding Americans were largely a godless bunch.

It’s more accurate to say they weren’t a unified Christian bunch.  I suspect that as much as different Christian sects in that area distrusted each other, the very idea of a “Christian nation” encompassing them all would have seemed to them ridiculous.  The Puritans would have been loath, to pick an example, to allow Catholics to have any influence over their affairs – so in the context of the time, a “Christian nation” was an oxymoron.

"Bother," said Pooh as Satan pointed out the small print.

I'd be up for it on the crass commercial grounds, if nothing else!

Christmas - the Season Where Hypocrites Sell Junk to Idiots!

Better yet - let's rehabilitate the season origins as the Roman Saturnalia!

That should be fun!

I think everyone realizes that your brand of Christianity varied at the time depending on region.

Quakers in Pennsylvania
Catholics in Maryland (I think)
actual freedom of religion (and an active
Jewish community in Rhode Island)
Dutch Reform in New York City (for a while)
assorted Methodists and Presbyterians in the
more frontier areas

Of course, one of the leading religions was the Church of England. After the revolution that got a bit complicated. To be a clergyman for the Chruch of England, you had to from England and swear allegiance to King George.

Re: Deism is largely unknown today

As an official movement, yes. But a lot of Americans are functional Deists: they have some vague belief is a God or Supreme Being and perhaps in an afterlife where in some fashion the screw-ups of this life are to be set to rights, but not in any of the specific theologies of Christianity.

Yes, when the states initially ratified the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, was understood to apply only to the federal government. It wasn't until after the Civil War that most of the Bill of Rights was applied to the states through the 14th Amendment.

This application was a big intervening event between now and when the Constitution was written. People who think we should somehow live our lives by the intent of the Founders are skipping over the enactment of the 14th Amendment. The more knowledgeable among them are doing it on purpose because they don't like this part of history -- or the Constitution as it stands today.

The Constitution does not contain the words "All men are created equal." That's the Declaration of Independence.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. During almost 15 centuries has the legal establisment of Christianity been on trial. What been its fruits More or less, in allplaces, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both superstition, bigotry and persecution.

John Madison  Memoirs and remonstrance against religious assessments

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

John Adams in letter to T. Jeffson

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales.. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

1 Corinthians 1

For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Morte has it...the intent of the Founders is unambiguously stated in the First Amendment. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

These sophmoric cut and paste discourses on the irreligiousity of the Sainted Fathers are for all their inaccuracy every bit as beside the point as their Fundamentalist counterpoints

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Hoppy says

Once published, all laws, including the Constitution itself, stand on what the written word says.  No matter what the Congress intended to say, it is what they did say that matters

Hoppy proves too much and mistates the law of constitutional and statutory interpretation which itself a matter of great dispute and difference

Point to you.

Oops.

The Church of England became the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

"We don't know what the Founders discussed among themselves when they all got together in a room, wrote and approved it, because no one was keeping notes at the time."

Well, there ARE a LOT of accounts of the legislative processes at the time. It's not "The Congressional Record", but it helps.

Check that site I reference in some of my threads. There are lots of accounts of actual debates in the states and elsewhere.

Transhuman said:

Unfortunately for them, we Transhumans will have the technology to answer their violence quickly and efficiently.

Just be careful you don't get mistaken for one of those who DO promote violence against the "infidels." Remain a bystander and you might just survive.

If you're really lucky, you might not even be transmogrified into one of us without your consent.

Shorter Transhuman:

resistance...is...futile...you...will...be...assimilated

"The Constitution's ban on "religious tests for office" sounds quaint to our ears..."

It may SOUND quaint, but look at what we have experienced. John Kennedy only managed to get elected by (eloquently) promising that he would not listen to the Pope before making decisions. Does anyone worry about people in other jobs listening to the Pope?

Could anyone imagine an atheist getting elected to any major office, especially president? A muslim? A jew? (Did anyone besides me read "The Wanting of Levine" by Mike Halberstam?) A wiccan*?

Even in the last election, Kerry, who was an altarboy, and who reguarly attends church was judged not to be "religious" by the religious right, which most definitely voted on religious grounds (note I did not say religious PRINCIPLES).

So, as quaint as the language sounds, it is only because the prejudice is, like most of them, unspoken (except in the Jerry Falwell and his ilk's pulpits)

*By the way, there is a current fight going on at the VA about putting the Wiccan symbol (a star in a circle) on the gravestone of a Wiccan casualty. The symbols they do allow include Atheists, and all kinds of religions I never heard of. If I can find the site again I'll post it. It's pretty interesting!

Jan Knaus

I found it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/05/27/top-veterans-official-joi_n_21713.html

By George, I think she's got it!

Re: A jew?

You mean there are no Jews in high office? I guess I am misinformed about Joe Liebermann’s religion.

In the larger question you are confusing a “test for office” which was an official statement of the faith which failure or refusal to make would LEGALLY disqualify one for an office. Voter preference may be silly or outrageous but it is not what we are talking about here.

Well, I don't think I've ever supported "plain meaning" of any law absent legislative history - including the Second Amendment. One generally supports "plain meaning" until that meaning is questioned - then you look for legislative intent.

I think you're still obfuscating the fact that the record of the Founders intent is plentiful - from their speeches to their letters to each other at the time.

The fact that there may be no first-hand accounts of a specific debate on a specific amendment until a few years later is not on a par with, say, the Bible, where there are NO accounts of ANY of the events in it until a CENTURY or more - and THEN the entire thing has been translated and re-translated a thousand times to the point where the current versions are almost meaningless compared to the originals.

I agree that it is intellectual dishonesty for the religionists to start cherry-picking quotes about God in order to establish that the Founders intended the US to be a Christian nation. It behooves us then to expose this dishonesty - because tactically it establishes the enemy to be a liar.

Look at Blackton's post about George Washington buying slaves. His headline and reference to GW's letter emphasize that Washington would have accepted a Jew or an atheist - but leaves out the part where Washington would accept a "Christian of any sect." It totally changes the connotation - so much so that Blackton clearly dropped the Christian reference to attempt to frame GW as a Christian.

That's fudging - that's intellectual dishonesty.

According to Bart Ehrman ("Misquoting Jesus") the number of translation errors discovered to date in the various versions of the Bible exceeds the number of words in same.

Precisely because of this, and your comment about other historical sources, one is cautious in divining meaning. TH has it right, I think, in that intent becomes more important when the plain meaning is vague or drifting. Intent does not have to be followed, but it's not a bad thing to figure out.

I think TH is getting too much flack on this, since he is arguing to resist any dogmatic interpretive approach, I feel.