States petition for secession

For your reading pleasure, Faith, try some Mark Twain:Mark Twain on Religion : Bible Teaching and Religious PracticeHe's still pretty much spot-on, and he's over a century beneath the sod....

Don't play coy. Your proposed set up does not meet the definition of a republican form of government. You aim to preserve a theocracy by disallowing entire segments of people from participation in the making and implementation of policy.From a practical standpoint, there are enough aspects of your government that do not pass constitutional muster that your attempts to press it on either residents or Americans passing through your territory won't survive a challenge. But perhaps if you leave visitors alone, you might be able to survive in the way that Scientology has survived in that town in central Florida. Good luck.Edited by NoNukes, : Fix bad apostrophe

That was under Henry, so not exactly Catholic, no. Not Roman Catholic, anyway. But as Macaulay says: That is, abandoning doctrines that smacked of Catholicism, he went on merrily burning people (Catholics and the Wrong Sort Of Protestant) under Edward VI, who was definitely Protestant. Well, as Macaulay points out, he wouldn't have done that if his recantation had got him off the hook. It was only when he found that Mary was going to burn him whatever he said that he decided to play the martyr being burned for his faith rather than the Catholic not being burned at all. A man dying rather than recant his faith is a heroic martyr, a man dying and incidentally not recanting his faith, not so much.

Except that he did so as a Protestant. Well, the implication is that the death of Henry VIII and the accession of Edward VI was an extraordinarily convenient time to decide that transubstantiation was false. By a lucky coincidence, Cranmer's views on theology were always just the same as the reigning monarch. Unless, Macaulay hints, this isn't a coincidence at all, and Cranmer was the prototype of the Vicar of Bray.

Excuse me, but wasn't Henry VIII Catholic until he decided to get rid of a wife and the Pope wouldn't let him?And if Cranmer condemned those who DENIED transubstantiation, that certainly is a Catholic mindset. It's what Protestants were burned at the stake FOR.So this comment makes no sense: Excuse me but it says he CONDEMNED those who DENIED the Catholic doctrine... I don't see this in Macaulay's remarks though and you got the above wrong so I don't have any reason to think you got the rest right. Not that it COULDN'T be true, since he already had the Catholic habit anyway...As for his recantation, Macaulay SURMISES that Cranmer wasn't sincere, he doesn't prove it.

YOu haven't given any proof whatever that Latimer burned anyone after he'd become a Protestant. Your assertion doesn't suffice.If Cranmer wasn't sincere in any of his beliefs then it hardly matters one way or the other under which flag he burned anybody.

Fine then not a republic either, but definitely not a democracy.I don't want the Constitution we have because it was a betrayal of the Christian majority when it was written. Wasn't I clear about that? So it's irrelevant that the laws of my Puritan state aren't constitutional by today's standards.And of course the whole thing is voluntary so the idea of pressing it on anyone is just your usual crabbed strawman fantasy that you're so good at.

Yes. What he was after than is a subtle question. Under Henry VIII. Then, under Edward VI, he became a staunch Protestant. Then you are not looking. Here you go again: No, you're just not following it.Cranmer was a Roman Catholic when he was appointed to be Archbishop of Canterbury, which was done through a Papal Bull. When Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome, Cranmer became what one might call a semi-Catholic, supporting the royal supremacy over the church of England, but maintaining those Catholic doctrines believed by Henry such as transubstantiation, and persecuting those who denied it. On the accession of Edward VI, Cranmer suddenly became a staunch Protestant who didn't believe in transubstantiation at all, and burned Catholics. And then when the Catholic Mary I came to the throne, he recanted his Protestantism repeatedly, but Mary burned him anyway.And all through these changes of opinion until his arrest by Mary, he continued to oppress and persecute anyone who deviated from whichever official party line he was following at the time.

The US was never a theocracy, Rahvin, but it WAS Christian in spirit. Nations of Europe also regarded themselves as Christian after the Reformation without being theocracies. You took my comment out of context of course, that's how all you guys operate here. What I want NOW though IS a theocracy, I want a state like the original Puritan and Pilgrim colonies.

No, it's the spirit of the thing that matters not how it is done, which could be done many ways according to various cultures without in any way "trumping" the Bible which is universal so that such customs are utterly irrelevant to its spirit, and the spirit is the main thing, and if community involvement is the point that can be adapted to and I could NOT care less about any of this. Because of Jesus' teachings such a community might not follow much of the OT laws anyway, that's not something I've studied. I'm not INTERESTED in the specifics of how the Pilgrim and Puritan state was governed or how a new version would be governed. The topic in question here is how to split the nation so that it might be possible to have such a state, that's all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, you could have looked it up.Latimer participated, for example, in the trial and execution of the Catholic John Forest. From WP: Or under what flag he was burned? Have it one way or another, but it would be a bit of a stretch to count him a non-Protestant when he was persecuting people in the Protestant cause under Edward VI but as a valiant Protestant martyr when he was persecuted by Mary.Edward VI, however, was sincere --- as sincere as Mary.Slice it how you like, both sides behaved, during the Reformation, in a way that would have revolted the Apostles and made the angels weep. Not universally, of course, but there were some right swine on both sides.

So you don't know what you want, but you do know that you want it?I would think that developing a concrete proposal would be an important step in getting to whatever it is you want. You can't just say to people: "Let us secede from the United States and form a new nation of Piginapokistan, where we shall do ... y'know ... stuff ... founded firmly on principles that I couldn't care less about."

I would have thought that "a Christian state that conforms more or less to the inspiration of the original Pilgrims and Puritans" would have been sufficient description. A state that is Christian and whose documents and laws are designed to KEEP it Christian is the idea, to protect it from the kinds of corruptions that allowed the US to lose its original Christian character.Why on a thread like this would it be necessary to try to be more specific, especially considering that there isn't the remotest possibility of my getting what I want anyway? We COULD go back to ideas of dividing the nation between liberals and conservatives which RAZD was happy with back in Message 58 and which got me off on this track in the first place. That's fine too but I was curious what possibility there might be for my more specific wish.HOW it is to be constituted doesn't seem relevant to me, just that it is to be Christian and STAY Christian, and the question then is What sort of practical rearrangements in the physical layout of the nation might be possible to accommodate such a state?But again, we can keep it to a division between the reds and the blues if that's easier. I have the feeling it really doesn't make any difference though, everybody would rather argue about the details of this state I've proposed,which I haven't even begun to think about.Or we can abandon the whole thread, that's fine too.

The problem with a Puritan state or nation is that the leaders inevitably would try to tell everyone else how to run their lives.Small examples: blue laws. Larger examples: wanting to see and control what goes on in other peoples' bedrooms, and forcing their ideas of "what is right" on everyone else; trying to forbid contraception, divorce etc.Its none of their damn business either in our current society or in a Puritan state or nation!As Robert Heinlein, one of our greatest philosophers, noted:

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein

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It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers