I kept saying this and the Libs, here, denied it.

[Gotholic]

A sample from my thread...

Two historians at the University of Houston did a 10-year study of the ideas that shaped our republic. They started with 15,000 documents from the Colonial era, which were boiled down to 3,154 statements. The three most quoted individuals were French philosopher Montesquieu (8.3%), English jurist William Blackstone (7.9%) and English philosopher John Locke (2.9%). But Biblical citations dwarfed them all. Ninety-four percent of the founding fathers' quotes were based on the Bible -- 34% directly from its pages and 60% from men who had used the Bible to arrive at their conclusions.

Source: Donald S. Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” 78 American Political Science Review 189 (1984), 189-197 as quoted by Eidsmoe in “The Framers of the Constitution: Christians or Deists?,” 3, referring to research done by Professors Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman. John Eidsmoe is a constitutional law professor at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama.

Church in the U.S. Capitol

Our unique checks-and-balances system of government would never have been conceived through secularism. For example, the 3 Branches of Government is based on Isaiah 33:22. The separation of powers is based on Jeremiah 17:9. Tax exemption of churches is based on Ezra 7:24. Repeatedly in early congressional records, the Bible was used as the premise for discussions and law making. For example, the Congressional Record of September 25, 1789 sites that a discussion of II Chronicles 6 led to the declaring of the first Thanksgiving holiday.

Source

In his first inaugural address, President Washington's stated, "It would be improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being.... No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than people of the United States.... We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven cannot be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." It concluded with a church service at Saint Paul's Chapel, led by the chaplains of Congress.

Source

 

[spike]

It is a phrase of a deposit of faith of the time. Just like how we have people now referring to points in history in the secular sense as Before Common Era and Common Era since Christianity is not common as it once was. Sure, "Sunday" is a name left over from a day to worship the sun, however, "in the year of our Lord" was not left over at the time it was written on the Constitution.

It's a phrase referencing a date. The date being the important part. To make it into anything else is being dishonest.

The phrase is taken out of context. There is no period after "religion". Also, you have omitted a great chunk of the argument the author presented. I will quote it here:

I found the meat of the argument and then noticed it wasn't rational.

Again I'm going to ask...What kind of religious involvement in our government would you like to see exactly Goth?

 

[spike]

Vast Leftwing Media Conspiracy exposed.
Judeo-Christin Nation shown.

Truths = Much liberal denial and butt-hurt in this thread.

In God We Trust -- Commies not so much!

It looks like you haven't been paying attention or are just in denial. Your baseless claims have been proven wrong.

Sorry to break it to you but there's no conspiracy, no "Cristin" nation, and no commies.

 

[ResearchMonkey]

Spike, you're going to hell! You know that, right?

 

[spike]

No, I've got it covered. Hell is for people who think their religion is superior or their race is superior to their wife's.

 

[ResearchMonkey]

Ignorance IS bliss, enjoy your evening.

 

[spike]

Are you feeling pretty blissful or something?

 

[2minkey]

don't worry spike, it's all doublespeak. "self-hating" for instance, actually means "capable of thinking for oneself."

 

[Gotholic]

It's a phrase referencing a date. The date being the important part. To make it into anything else is being dishonest.

It is what it is. It is not a strong case for the notion that America was founded upon Christianity (which is why I did not include it in my thread) nor is it irrelevant. The reference to Christ could have been omitted if it was desired. The authors of the Constitution were in no way obligated to insert that phrase while dating the Constitution. The following article explains it quite well:

In the Year of Our Lord?

by Joel F. Hansen

The First Christian Fellowship of Eternal Sovereignty recognizes Jesus Christ as our Lord and this has been the focus of some discussion as to whether or not that is a misleading statement.

This debate caused me to embark on some research on the subject of calendar systems around the world and through the centuries. I was surprised to find out that, if I had been born in China, instead of being born in the year of our Lord 1944, I would have been born in the year of the Monkey, since the Chinese calendar is based upon a revolving cycle of 12 years in which the various years are named after pigs, tigers, rats, monkeys, and various other animals, and that I had the luck to be born a monkey. How inspiring.

A review of other calendars around the world shows that most, if not all of them, are religiously based. For instance, the Islamic calendar is reckoned from Al) 622, the day after the Hegira or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. So, I could have been born in the year of Mohammed 1364. The Aztec calendar, in use when the European Christians landed in Mexico, is a solar calendar derived from the Mayan system of 400 BC. In the center is the head of the sun god; around it, in concentric circles, is the history of the world according to Aztec mythology. So I could have been born in the year of the sun god 2344, instead of being a monkey. That gave me a lot of comfort.

There is the Jewish calendar, which is based. on the starting point of Jewish chronology, variously given as 4004 BC and 3761 BC, the date of the creation of the world as described in the Old Testament. The years in that calendar are designed A.M, which stands for anno mundi (the year of the world) and BCE (before the common era, as a replacement for BC). So I could have traced my birth back to the time of the creation of the earth, as set forth in the Bible, which was getting a little closer to what I wanted for the year of my birth.

By contrast, the Gregorian calendar, which is the one the Founders were using, was adopted all over “Christendom” (a term now lost in our politically correct newspeak) as a result of a decree by Pope Gregory XIII. It was first adopted on the continent (of Europe) and later, in 1752, was made the official calendar of England, and it remains to this day the official calendar of the United States. The Gregorian calendar is a Christian calendar, because it uses the birth of Jesus Christ as the starting date. Dates of the Christian era are designated AD (Latin anno domini, “in the year of our Lord”) and BC (before Christ), thus making the birth of our Lord as the center point of all human history. The official Christian church calendar is a table containing holy days, saints’ days, and festivals of’ the Church, with the dates of the civil calendar on which they occur. These include the fixed feasts, such as Christmas, and the movable feasts, which depend on the date of Easter. It was this calendar, the Christian calendar, to which the Founders referred when giving the date of their inspired creation, the U.S. Constitution.

Some reply, that is all fine and good, but the Founders were egocentric white males who cared nothing for these other calendars, were totally immersed in their own little American world, and would just have used “in the year of our Lord” as a matter of common practice, without thinking more about it, and certainly they weren’t trying to make any statement. But what the above discussion shows is that a civilization’s calendar is reflective of its values, its history, its beliefs, and its religion. Western Europe calculates its time from the birth of Christ because it was a Christian civilization. The Founders knew all of this. They were profound students of history. Their writings show an acquaintance with the philosophies Of government throughout history and around the world. They knew they were Christians, and they knew that the nation they were building was founded upon Christian, Biblical principles. A close examination of the historical record will reveal that they put the words “in the Year of our Lord” into the U.S. Constitution knowingly.

The relevant paragraph in Article VII states:

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventieth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. IN WITNESS whereof We have here- unto subscribed our Names...​

These men were subscribing their names to a document, which was later described by Gladstone as “the greatest document ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” They knew it was profoundly important. They knew it would govern a vast land of millions of people, and hoped it would do so for a long time. They had debated, sweat blood over, edited, re-edited, compromised, and recompromised, hammered and pounded every word, sentence, paragraph, section, and article with every ounce of intelligence and inspiration that the entire body collectively possessed. These were the most dedicated patriots, the wisest leaders, the greatest minds, and the most fervent patriots America had produced, men raised up by the hand of God to accomplish this marvelous miracle. And now they had finished their work, and were proudly subscribing their names. They not only told the date from the birth of Christ, they told the date from the birth of their nation. They didn’t just put down the numbers “1787” or even “1787 AD”. No, they spelled it out in meticulous detail, and made sure they said that this document, one of the most important and profound in all of human history, was properly related to the God that they worshipped by declaring that it was done “in the Year of our Lord”. Did they. do this merely by accident? It hardly seems possible.

For comparison, it. is instructive to look at another revolution, which was occurring about this same time in Europe, the infamous French revolution. While the rallying cry of Americans had been, No King but King Jesus“, the rallying cry of the French Revolution, ”Liberty, Equality, Fraternity“, did not mention the name of Deity. And it is little wonder. The French revolution was an anti-Christian revolution. Its leaders were either Deists (God wound up the universe like a great clock and then forgot about us) or they were avowed atheists. Their founding document, their equivalent of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution rolled into one, was written by Maximilien Robespierre, a fanatical devotee of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a man whose ideas formed the basis for the philosophies of modern socialist tyrants and philosophers such as Adolph Hitler and Karl Marx. When Robespierre took control of the French government, he proclaimed as the official religion ”The Cult of the Supreme Being“ which was based on Rousseau’s theory of Deism. In Paris, all churches were closed and the radicals began actively to sponsor the revolutionary religion known as the ”Cult of Reason."

Is it any wonder, then, that the date of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Declaration Droits de L’Homme) has, appearing prominently printed in its title, the date, listed as simply “1792.” There is no AD, there is no “in the year of our Lord,” and no reference to Jesus Christ can be found anywhere in the document. This is not surprising in the least, when we realize that in October of 1793 the Jacobin government abolished the traditional Christian calendar and replaced it with the “Republican” calendar (seems fitting, doesn’t it?), which substituted for the traditional dating system such dates as the “Ninth Thermidor”. It was this Deistic, atheistic, anti-Christian, even paganistic government which instituted the infamous “Reign of Terror” in which thousands of innocent people were guillotined. In Paris alone, 2639 people were beheaded. This revolutionary government ended with the guillotining of Robespierre himself. The chaos which resulted ended in the ascendance of Napolean Bonaparte as the dictator of France.

Why did our Founding Fathers not sponsor a reign of terror? Why, in their Declaration of Independence, did they say that men were “endowed by their Creator” with certain unalienable rights emblazoned in the glorious Bill of Rights? And why did they enshrine the right to worship God freely as the first of these unalienable rights emblazoned in the glorious Bill of Rights? And why did they, unlike Robespiarre, state in no uncertain terms that their greatest work, the Constitution of the United States of America, was created “in the Year of our Lord” one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven...?

The answer of course is that the American revolution was a Christian revolution, whose soldiers’ battle cry was “No King but King Jesus!” Although the secular historians have tried to delete this fact from our history, it is there for anyone to see who will study the historical record. George Washington issued the following order during the War for Independence: “The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man, will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.” John Adams declared, “The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of Wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and Humanity.” In 1785, James Madison, later to become the Father of the Constitution, rose to speak against a bill in the Virginia legislature, declaring that be was opposed to it because “the policy of the bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity.” And Benjamin Franklin (sometimes accused of being a Deist) proclaimed: “Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”

And where are we now? Our children now take “Spring Break” instead of Easter Vacation, and they are off for a two-week “Winter Break” instead of Christmas vacation. The secularization and paganization of our calendar goes hand in hand with the secularization of every element of our society, from the removal of the Ten Commandments from our classrooms to the outlawing of Nativity scenes from public parks, to the decrees that prayers and Bibles are to be removed from our classrooms and replaced with sex education and condoms.

The calendar is not exempt recently a judge in Florida ordered that the letters AD were not to be written on any date of any document filed in his court, because some people appearing before him might not believe that this is the “year of the Lord.” Notice how he put that: The year of the Lord, not the year of our Lord. That is no more a mistake than is the fact that the founders stated it properly as the Year of our Lord.

Yes, Article VII of the U.S. Constitution does acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Lord of this Land, and it acknowledges Him as “OUR Lord”. Well, who is the “our” referred to? It can be none other than those referred to in the preamble, which states: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.. .do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” In other words, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the people of the United States, by the very words of the Constitution itself!

If we Sovereign Americans don’t fight to maintain Jesus Christ as “Our Lord”, as the Lord of this Land, who will? If we don’t acknowledge that the Founders put His name in the Constitution on purpose? who will? And if we cave in to the onslaught of the pagans and secularists against all of our Christian institutions, including our calendar, who won’t?

The language in our Preamble is precisely on point. “The Founders of Our Nation stated that the United States Constitution was ’Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven. thus acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Lord of ”We the People of the United States" and as the God of this land.

I hope and fervently pray that we can maintain the memory of freedom in the hearts Of the people of this country, that they may know that “where the Spirit of Christ is, there is liberty”, and that we the Sovereign Independent Americans, may ever hold aloft the torch of liberty, which is enlightened from above by the light of Christ. May God bless our land forever, and may His Son ever be Our God and Our Redeemer.

Source

I found the meat of the argument and then noticed it wasn't rational.

How is it not rational? That statement is in compliance with the First Amendment. Christianity is not the official religion of the United States. Also, "The Reciept" of the Treaty of Tripoli starts off with "Praise be to God!". Besides, that statement, "the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,– as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen" is not even in the original treaty. The following article explains and makes some very good points:

Tripoli v. Paris: A Tale of Two Treaties

Published by John Eidsmoe March 10th, 2009

Recently “Dean” posted a comment on this blog claiming the United States is not a Christian nation, and citing as evidence an alleged clause from the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli stating that “…the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,– as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen.” I’ve seen the Treaty of Tripoli cited a lot recently in church-state discussions, so an explanation is appropriate.

As a preliminary, let us assume, just for the sake of argument, that the clause is a genuine article of the Treaty. If so, it says nothing beyond what is already stated in the First Amendment—that there is no official church or established religion at the federal level in the United States. It does not say the American government is divorced from God, that Biblical values are not the basis of American law, or that American Christians have no place in the public arena. The Treaty was ratified by the Senate unanimously and with no recorded debate because it says nothing with which any American Christian in 1796 would disagree or with which I would disagree today. Does anyone seriously believe I want Barack Obama to be head of the church?

James Patrick Holding correctly observes that the so-called Article 11 does not say America is in no sense founded on the Christian religion; it says the government of the United States of America is in no sense founded on the Christian religion. The nation is not the same as the government. The nation was founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the government was founded with the Constitution in 1787-89. Saying the government is not founded on the Christian religion is much different from saying the nation’s social/political network was not founded with Christian principles in mind.

But having said that, let me add that it is very doubtful that this language was ever part of the original Treaty. I make the following observations:

1. The clause does not appear in the Arabic version of the Treaty; it was inserted into the English translation. Please note the following entry from Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1949, XI:1070:

“Most extraordinary (and wholly unexplained) is the fact that Article 11 of the Barlow translation with its famous phrase, ‘the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,’ does not exist at all. There is no Article 11. The Arabic text which is between Articles 10 and 12 is in form a letter crude and flamboyant and withal quite unimportant, from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. How that script came to be written and to be regarded, as in the Barlow translation, as Article 11 of the treaty as there written, is a mystery and seemingly must remain so. Nothing in the diplomatic correspondence of the time throws any light whatever on the point.”​

A likely explanation is that the Dey of Algiers wrote this note on the Treaty to mollify concerns of the Pasha of Tripoli about entering into a Treaty with an “infidel” (non-Islamic) nation like the United States. The translator assumed this was part of the Treaty and translated it along with the rest of the document. Very likely the clauses of the original document were not numbered, so the translator numbered this Clause 11 between Clauses 10 and 12.

2. Translations of Treaties and other documents can differ greatly. Consider Barlow’s translation of Article 12:

“In case of any dispute arising from a violation of any of the articles of this treaty no appeal shall be made to arms, nor shall war be declared on any pretext whatever. But if the Counsel residing at the place where the dispute shall happen shall not be able to settle the same, an amicable reference shall be made to the mutual friend of the parties, the Dey of Algiers, the parties hereby engaging to abide by his decision. And he by virtue of his signature to this treaty engages for himself and successors to declare the justice of the case according to the true interpretation of the treaty, and to use all the means in his power to enforce the observation of the same.”​

However, in 1930 Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje of Leiden prepared a more literal translation of Article 12:

“Praise be to God [Allah]! Declaration of the twelfth article. If there arises a disturbance between us both sides, and it becomes a serious dispute, and the American Consul is not able to make clear (settle) his affair, and (then) the affair shall remain suspended between them both, between the Pasha of Tripoli, may God strengthen him, in the well-protected Algiers, has taken cognizance of the matter. We shall accept whatever decision he enjoins on us, and we shall agree with this condition and his seal (i.e., the decision sealed by him); may God make it all permanent love and a good conclusion between us in the beginning and the end, by His grace and favor, amen!”​

The differences between the two translations are obvious.

3. Joel Barlow, an American diplomat, was a key figure in negotiating the Treaty, and some credit him with the translation. Barlow had been a chaplain under General Washington during the War for Independence, but many believe that after the War he left Christian orthodoxy and became either a deist or an atheist. Some have speculated that Barlow’s religious unorthodoxy may have influenced his translation of the Treaty. However, it is uncertain whether Barlow translated the Treaty; some claim he did not know Arabic.

4. Those who believe the Treaty of Tripoli establishes the secular character of America argue that it doesn’t matter what the Arabic version of the Treaty says; it was the English version (Barlow translation) that was read and approved by the Senate. I believe it does matter. A treaty is a contract between two (or more) nations, and essential feature of any contract is an agreement on terms, commonly called a “meeting of minds.” If A contracts to sell his house to B, and A’s version of the contract lists a selling price of $200,000 while B’s version lists the selling price as $100,000, there obviously is no meeting of minds and therefore there is no valid contract. If the difference is over an essential element, this lack of a meeting of minds results in the invalidation of the contract; if the difference is over a non-essential element, then maybe only that provision of the contract would be invalid. At the very least, there was no meeting of minds between the United States and Tripoli concerning the alleged Article 11; therefore, at the very least, that article is invalid.

5. Piracy continued despite the Treaty, resulting in war with Tripoli in 1801. The Jefferson Administration negotiated and adopted a new treaty with Tripoli on April 17, 1806. The 1806 treaty does not include the so-called Article 11 of the old Treaty or any language remotely similar thereto.

All things considered, it is very unlikely that the so-called Article 11 is genuine, and even if it is genuine, it is a very frail reed on which to base an argument that America was not founded on Christian principles.

Finally, those who use the Treaty of Tripoli to prove that America is not a Christian nation, usually ignore the Treaty of Paris of 1783. The Treaty of Paris, negotiated by Ben Franklin and John Adams among others, is truly a foundational document for the United States, because by this Treaty England recognized American independence. And there is no question about the validity or the wording of the Treaty of Paris. It begins with the words: “In the Name of the most holy and undivided Trinity… .”

Source

Again I'm going to ask...What kind of religious involvement in our government would you like to see exactly Goth?

That is inconsequential.

 

[valkyrie]

I hope you take a look at my thread which was heavily researched. Now as for the comments I bolded...

1. There is actually a direct reference, val. I, however, deliberately left it out of my thread. Article VII: "in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven".

2. Jefferson's letter is addressed in my thread.

That is not a direct reference to religion nor deity. Anno Domini (A.D.) or the year of our lord is the statement of year in the manner common to the times and references the commonly used Gregorian calendar. Adding A.D. or Anno Domini or it's meaning "the year of our lord" only gives a reference to the calendar year. It has no other meaning, hidden or overt. My statement is still correct.

Your below reference is for a Christian blog, it is not written by a Constitutional Historian.

 

[spike]

The following article explains it quite well:

No that article engages in a bunch of wishful thinking trying to turn a common phrase into something it certainly isn't. It's a date. That is all it is.

This article explains it quite well.

Despite the secular nature of our national government, there is one unambiguous reference to Christ in the Constitution. Article VII dates the Constitution in "the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." But what does this mean for the principle of religious liberty?

The answer is: nothing. Our dating system is an historical artifact of Western culture, and has no legal significance or implications for the meaning of the Constitution or the First Amendment. The American Colonies were established by Europeans; we naturally inherited the European practice of dating years from the birth of Christ. Nothing follows from this except the trivial observation that, in establishing our independence, we decided not to completely overthrow our cultural heritage.

In fact, the European dating system is infused with pagan holdovers that, if taken seriously, lead to exactly the opposite conclusions reached by accommodationists. We have a seven day week, after the model of ancient Israel, but we inherited Pagan names for these days; does the Constitution then establish Sun worship when it excepts Sunday from the ten days Presidents have to veto a bill before it becomes law? Does it establish worship of the Moon when it says that Congress will begin it's sessions on the first Monday of December? Does the use of European names for months mean that the Constitution establishes worship of Julius Caesar (July) or Augustus Caesar (August)? The issue was a serious one for some Christians; Quakers, for example, adopted numerical references for days and months precisely to avoid objectionable Pagan names. The rejection of the Quaker system suggests that the founders read very little into their dating practices. To base an argument on those practices is to stand on extraordinarily shaky ground.

To be sure, the Constitution could have avoided the words "Year of our Lord" in the date (as it does elsewhere when it refers to specific years), but it's hard to imagine why. "The Year of our Lord" was the standard way of dating important documents in the 1700s; its use was ritualistic, not religious. It is doubtful that anyone, Christian, deist, or otherwise, would have given the words a second thought, or ascribed to them any legal significance. And if the intent of the Constitution was to signal a favored status for Christianity, it could have done so in a thousand less ambiguous ways than including the words "in the Year of our Lord." That some accommodationists appeal to these words is silent testimony to how little evidence there is for the idea that the Constitution embodies Christian morality or thought.

How is it not rational?

I pointed that out above.

Besides, that statement, "the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,– as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen" is not even in the original treaty.

It was in the final version approved by the Senate. That tells us everything.

The following article explains and makes some very good points:

That article uses a lot of wishful thinking and conjecture to avoid plain words approved by the Senate.

That is inconsequential.

Bullshit, that is the most important part. How do you see being a christian nation or not being a christian nation changing our government in practice. The changes to our government is actually the only consequence of this particular debate.

So answer the question already.

 

[Gotholic]

That is not a direct reference to religion nor deity. Anno Domini (A.D.) or the year of our lord is the statement of year in the manner common to the times and references the commonly used Gregorian calendar. Adding A.D. or Anno Domini or it's meaning "the year of our lord" only gives a reference to the calendar year. It has no other meaning, hidden or overt. My statement is still correct.

People who do not want to have any religious connotation will omit "the year of our Lord". This was the case during the French Revolution when France went secular. They did omit that phrase from their documents.

Your below reference is for a Christian blog, it is not written by a Constitutional Historian.

It is no blog. Jefferson's letter was a personal letter. I do not think a Constitutional Historian is needed.

In a recent letter on religion, the writer put supporters of public religious expression on one side and Thomas Jefferson on the other. This is logical given what most know about Jefferson's “wall of separation between church and state.”

Jefferson penned that phrase to reassure the Danbury (CT) Baptist Association that because of separation of church and state, the government would never interfere with their public religious expressions. For the next 150 years, federal courts followed Jefferson's intent and attached his separation metaphor to the Free Expression Clause of the First Amendment, thus consistently upholding public religious expressions. However, in 1947, the Supreme Court reversed itself and began applying the phrase to the Establishment Clause instead, thus causing federal courts to remove rather than preserve public religious expressions.

The proof is abundant that this was not Jefferson's intent. For example, two days after Jefferson wrote his separation letter, he attended worship services in the U. S. Capitol where he heard the Rev. John Leland preach a sermon. (As President of the Senate, Jefferson had personally approved the use of the Capitol Building for Sunday worship services.) The many diaries of Members of Congress during that time confirm that during Jefferson's eight years, he faithfully attended church services in the Capitol. In fact, he even ordered the Marine Band to play the worship services there. Jefferson also authorized weekly worship services at the War Department and the Treasury Building.

And on December 23, 1803, Jefferson's administration negotiated - and the Senate ratified - a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians that stated “the United States will give annually for seven years one hundred dollars for the support of a priest” to minister to the Indians (i.e., federal funds for Christian evangelism!) Jefferson also signed presidential documents, closing them with the appellation, “In the Year of our Lord Christ.” There are many similar surprising facts about Jefferson that are fully documented historically, but that have been ignored for the past 50 years.

So would religious conservatives and Thomas Jefferson really be on opposite sides of the church/state issue? Probably, for I doubt that conservatives would agree with using federal dollars for evangelization.

Source

 

[ResearchMonkey]

Nice work Goth! ...but you know; if you pee'd in his ear, he would claim it was only raining.

 

[Gotholic]

No that article engages in a bunch of wishful thinking trying to turn a common phrase into something it certainly isn't. It's a date. That is all it is.

This article explains it quite well.

During the French Revolution they omitted that phrase. Our Founding Fathers chose not to. To say it was merely "ritualistic" is inaccurate. It was a common phrase because Christianity was common. Saying "God bless you" is a common phrase to say after one sneezes, now do you know of any atheists who says that to someone?

I pointed that out above.

No, you said it was irrational but did not elaborate. A nation can have a government with no official religion but still be influenced by and have a Christian heritage.

It was in the final version approved by the Senate. That tells us everything.

The Federal government was not founded on the Christian religion, which is what it states and is in compliance with the First Amendment.

That article uses a lot of wishful thinking and conjecture to avoid plain words approved by the Senate.

The following is not wishful thinking:

James Patrick Holding correctly observes that the so-called Article 11 does not say America is in no sense founded on the Christian religion; it says the government of the United States of America is in no sense founded on the Christian religion. The nation is not the same as the government. The nation was founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the government was founded with the Constitution in 1787-89. Saying the government is not founded on the Christian religion is much different from saying the nation’s social/political network was not founded with Christian principles in mind.

Bullshit, that is the most important part. How do you see being a christian nation or not being a christian nation changing our government in practice. The changes to our government is actually the only consequence of this particular debate.

So answer the question already.

That discourse in which you would like to engage in would be fruitless. You and I are on very different planes.

 

[Altron]

During the French Revolution they omitted that phrase. Our Founding Fathers chose not to. To say it was merely "ritualistic" is inaccurate. It was a common phrase because Christianity was common. Saying "God bless you" is a common phrase to say after one sneezes, now do you know of any atheists who says that to someone?

It's there because it has to be. We currently omit it for convenience (because every nation is on the same calendar)

You can't just say the year 1776.

Like it or not, the US currently uses the Gregorian calendar.

We can speculate as to why, but the people who historically have kept track of time have been the church.

The Christians define their calendar from the birth of Jesus onwards - that is the event that marks the first year.

A year is a defined quantity. It can be measured by the sun and the stars. But a large quantity of years? That can't be measured. We only know because someone keeps track of it.

This year isn't the year 2010. There have been FAR more than 2010 years before this one. This year is 2010 Anno Domini, the 2010th year since the birth of Jesus (whether you take him to be your savior or not).

Any date is meaningless without a point of common reference.

The ONLY reason this year is 2010 is because the Christian church has been keeping track of it for that many years. For non-christian societies, they wouldn't call this year 2010. It would have some other number, relevant to events that defined them.

When the Founding Fathers wrote, they needed to write "1776 Anno Domini" to distinguish the fact that they were following the same calendar as the Christian church (probably because a good number of Americans were Christian). If they just wrote "1776", nobody would have any idea what it was referring to.

This is taken for granted now, because the political and economical dominance of the United States has imposed our calendar on the rest of the world, so people of all religions consider this year to be 2010.

Saying the year is 1776 is like saying that I drove 25 to go to work. 25 what? Miles? kilometers? Fathoms? Leagues? Decimeters? Lightyears? It doesn't make any sense. If I said it to an American, he would think 25 miles. If I said it to anyone else, they would think 25 kilometers. The year is the same way. If you say it is 1776 to a person who does not follow the Gregorian calendar as implemented by the Christian church, they have no idea what year you're referring to. If you say 1776 Anno Domini, you are making it clear which year you are actually referring to.

QED.

 

[Gotholic]

It's there because it has to be. We currently omit it for convenience (because every nation is on the same calendar)

You can't just say the year 1776.

Like it or not, the US currently uses the Gregorian calendar.

We can speculate as to why, but the people who historically have kept track of time have been the church.

The Christians define their calendar from the birth of Jesus onwards - that is the event that marks the first year.

A year is a defined quantity. It can be measured by the sun and the stars. But a large quantity of years? That can't be measured. We only know because someone keeps track of it.

This year isn't the year 2010. There have been FAR more than 2010 years before this one. This year is 2010 Anno Domini, the 2010th year since the birth of Jesus (whether you take him to be your savior or not).

Any date is meaningless without a point of common reference.

The ONLY reason this year is 2010 is because the Christian church has been keeping track of it for that many years. For non-christian societies, they wouldn't call this year 2010. It would have some other number, relevant to events that defined them.

When the Founding Fathers wrote, they needed to write "1776 Anno Domini" to distinguish the fact that they were following the same calendar as the Christian church (probably because a good number of Americans were Christian). If they just wrote "1776", nobody would have any idea what it was referring to.

This is taken for granted now, because the political and economical dominance of the United States has imposed our calendar on the rest of the world, so people of all religions consider this year to be 2010.

Saying the year is 1776 is like saying that I drove 25 to go to work. 25 what? Miles? kilometers? Fathoms? Leagues? Decimeters? Lightyears? It doesn't make any sense. If I said it to an American, he would think 25 miles. If I said it to anyone else, they would think 25 kilometers. The year is the same way. If you say it is 1776 to a person who does not follow the Gregorian calendar as implemented by the Christian church, they have no idea what year you're referring to. If you say 1776 Anno Domini, you are making it clear which year you are actually referring to.

QED.

Declaration of the Rights of Man in France does simply say "1792". The phrase does not need to be said. Check out the article I posted about it here.

 

[spike]

During the French Revolution they omitted that phrase. Our Founding Fathers chose not to. To say it was merely "ritualistic" is inaccurate. It was a common phrase because Christianity was common. Saying "God bless you" is a common phrase to say after one sneezes, now do you know of any atheists who says that to someone?

It was a common phrase. It means nothing except the date. Yes, tons of religious people say "bless you" when people sneeze. Thanks for the example.

No, you said it was irrational but did not elaborate.

I did elaborate. Look again.

A nation can have a government with no official religion but still be influenced by and have a Christian heritage.

Sure our nation has been influenced by lots of religions, philosophies, and cultural heritages.

The Federal government was not founded on the Christian religion, which is what it states and is in compliance with the First Amendment.

Exactly.

The following is not wishful thinking:

That passage was ridiculous.

That discourse in which you would like to engage in would be fruitless. You and I are on very different planes.

If you are unwilling to discuss what actual real world changes this debate affects then you have no reason to be in this discussion.

Declaration of the Rights of Man in France does simply say "1792". The phrase does not need to be said.

You can omit AD as well because people know what you're referring to but adding either does not mean you're making some religious statement.

C'mon Goth, this is a ridiculous line of reasoning you're attempting here.

 

[Altron]

Declaration of the Rights of Man in France does simply say "1792". The phrase does not need to be said. Check out the article I posted about it here.

Yes, Goth, it clearly does. What the fuck does 1792 mean? Was the French Revolution held 1792 miles away from the Ukraine? Was the French Revolution held in a jet fighter travelling at 1792 miles per hour? Was the French Revolution held at 1792 meters above sea level?

Saying ...on this day, 1792, blah blah blah[b/] means absolutely nothing. Is it the 1792nd Year of the Smelly Goat Cheese? Is it the 1792nd year since the Flying Spaghetti Monster was created?

Saying ...on this day, 1776 Anno Domini, blah blah blah tells exactly what day it is. "Anno Domini" means "Go look at a Gregorian calendar". "1776" means "1776 years after the birth of Christ which is defined by the Gregorian calendar as the first year"

If anything, simply stating the year number without a calendar is more of an endorsement than stating the year number and what calendar it comes off of. Clearly, the French held an attitude that the Gregorian calendar should be universally accepted, so that anyone reading the document would be a Christian who would immediately know that "1792" means "1792 AD".

For the more secular Americans, they didn't want to exclude relationships with countries who did not use the same calendar as us. So, right off the bat, they put down "1776 AD" so that everyone is clear as to which calendar 1776 is referring to, so that they can convert to their own dates if it pleases them.

 

[2minkey]

it is not christian ideas that the constitution springs from. the leading ideas of the day were not christian in nature.

i think we are seeing the benefits here of a christian internet education.

 

[MrBishop]

Today is Av 17, 5770 (Hebrew)
Also Nov 28, 2010
Also the 5th month of the 27th year of the 78th cycle - Tiger (year 4708 Chinese)
16 Day of Sah'ban, 1431 (Islamic)
6th days of Mordad, 1389 (Persian)
6th day of Sravana, 1932 (Indian Civil)

Hell, going from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian one changed more than just the day it was but the year as well. (Todays is July 15th 2010 according to the Julian)