This rewriting of history is covered at http://www.Talk2Action.org - your one stop shopping for everything about the Christian Right.
Start here: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/26/144526/078 and click on some of the links.
Then here: http://www.talk2action.org/?op=search&topic=government for some more
Then Fred Clarkson's article: http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v19n3/clarkson_dominionism.html
And, in case it is not obvious, the original subject line manages to be both homophobic, and insulting to organizers like me who are people of faith trying to organize within that community.
-Chip Berlet
________________________________
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org on behalf of Chuck Grimes Sent: Fri 6/30/2006 11:14 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] God sucks the big cock
(due to volumne I needed some attention getting subject line)
I just watched an interview on Lehrer Newshour with Jon Meacham on his book, American Gospel. Meacham maintains that there is not a hard line separation between church and state in the US founding fathers and cites Washington and Madison. Madison for example was quoted as making a distinction between `tolerance' and `liberity' and Meacham says that liberity in Madison's lexicon was the greater separation of the two possible choices where mere tolerance is superceeded by liberity in which any belief system is included.
The implication in Madison is that Locke's tolerance of belief must be augmented with something more determinant and closer to Spinoza's idea of a freedom to philosophize (from J. Israel's Radical Enlightenment). This apparently absurd parsing of words actually has some important US historical background for countering the US rightwing and Christian fundies (and indirectly Leo Strauss).
What I am asking for is some US political history insight into this general controversy. According to Meacham it was Jefferson who introduced the phrase `wall of separation between church and state'.
The more important point is the deeper western US-EU historical transition between theological thought concerning the `state' and early Enlightenment thought about the secularization of the state. Clearly the US historically stands in some rather fogging ground between the two. It has never been able to clearly draw the line---thanks to a constant drone of many different periods of Protestant fundamentalism.
Feel free to comment on any of this at will. But historical notes with citations would be greatly appreciated....
CG ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 5843 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20060701/f77bd84f/attachment.bin>