It is true that as Xianity became the dominate conquering force, the only long surviving group which advocated the practice of temporal civil govt for earthly life and religious govt for spiritual life, were the baptist orders. I have not denied this nor have I shirked giving them credit for (in some denominations)
You sure sounded like you were shirking giving them credit to me. Glad you can admit what I have been saying all along; that this is the group that originated, at least in Western society, and fought for centuries for separation of Church and State. Note: "Baptist" is loose term here though.
Secularism means practical civil govt divorced from religious issues.
That's one definition. Guys like RAZD believe secularism means no government endorsement, acknowledgement or support for religion in general and thus thinks tax exemptions are unConstitutional. I don't believe separation of Church and State is necessarily a secular concept, nor that the US government was founded to be "secular." I think it's clear the US government is to be non-sectarian, and that is hugely different than secular as the term is used today.
I have to scratch my head. Then I realize you are using atheist and secularist interchangeably. I think that's why you keep projecting something I am NOT saying onto my position.
No, I am not confusing the terms, and maybe when you use "secular", you just mean non-sectarian, and thus have no problem with the government acknowledging God in thanksgiving, or tax exemptions for all churches, etc,...If that's the case, we agree. If by secular, you mean that the government cannot favor religion in general provided it is non-discriminaroty and non-sectarian, then I strongly disagree with your idea of secularism.
Yes, there were few if any atheist or pagan secularists discussing such ideas, much less any such communities under the Xian dominated kingdoms. There were however Xian SECULARISTS. The anabaptists were secularists, that is the definition of what they were discussing and fighting for.
The Anabaptists were not secularists. They were extremely devout groups of people, very religious. They would not be in favor, and are not today in favor, of taxing churches for example.
They were secularist as long as they were advocating separation between civil and religious authority.
Let's don't argue semantics. That makes them disciples of Jesus and Christians, if you ask me, not secularists. If secular means adopting Jesus' teachings in respect to the State, then fine, but most secularists today seem way off the reservation. For example, an Anabaptist would not oppose the State participating in acknowledging God and Jesus Christ. They just wouldn't want the State to coerce anyone to believe or to be a Christian. If you are the type of secularist, like them, that has no problem if we, as a nation, offer thanks to God, then good, but somehow I don't think that is the case.
It was ALWAYS a fight against Xians and Xian dogma. Even if it was Xians fighting Xians, those on top were always at all times Xian.
That's very misleading. The establishment and more secular minded people took the name of Christ and used religion to oppress. Not saying some were not also true believers in Catholicism, but the way I see it, the elite politicos, the rulers and intelligentsia, were on the side of the oppressors. Thankfully, after hundreds of years of butchering Christians like the Anabaptists, some from your side began to finally be won over and dropped their alliance with the Pope. That's how I see it.
Keep in mind that one reason early Protestants made headway while the Anabaptists were still persecuted was that German princes protected the Protestants because they still allowed the a marriage of Church and State. It was the rulers, the elite, creating this marriage.
That is why I am consistently saying that the question of religion as "source" is moot.
But you completely ignore Jesus' teachings which were the primary source for Anabaptists and others bringing this topic to the fore. They were not doing this for political reasons for heavens sake. They were dying for this tenet. It had nothing to do with politics and economics.
Now, when more secular-minded people saw it worked well in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania economically and politically, they finally relented and began to go along with what these Christians and the gospels had been saying for hundreds of years.
The thing is, moreover, that I don't anyone that can credinly argue today that Jesus anywhere in his teachings, or His Person, would justify torturing and killing people to convert them. The killing stemmed from the Roman Empire, the State's influence, not the New Testament.
While you are correct that anabaptists, or some other protestant denominations, had been practicing forms of secular govt, and anabaptists in particular had a long history of having desired such things (though the nature of what it meant had evolved over time), it is not anabaptist doctrine which got founded in the constitution.
That's where you are wrong. When the founders use the term "separation of Church and State" they are using an Anabaptist term with specific theological content. So whereas they were not necessarily Anabaptists, they did adopt their doctrine.
The founders WERE the product and exemplars of the age of enlightenment and reason (and rennaissaince if you want to be a stickler). They WERE the ones that founded the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
I think you need then to take a much larger look at who the founders were; that it was much more than a handful of men, and also realize that the founders did not win the Revolution without the men supporting it, and more importantly, American independence was a byproduct of colonial independence in practical affairs, and as such, the founding of the USA has it's roots in the founding of the colonies.
You are missing the FACT, that if it had been pygmy tribes in Africa where they discovered it, it would have held equal weight in consideration.
What a stupid statement! They met in Philadelphia, a city founded on Quaker ideals of religious liberty. They merely adopted what was in place at present. That's why some said we didn't even need a first amendment. They said everyone already has all these freedoms, and so if we point out some, it may suggest the others are not absolute.
It was REASON, based in empirical observation.
Yea well, the elite reasoned for hundreds of years, heck a few thousand years really, that the only way to keep the peace was to establish a sacral rite common to all the people. Finally, when some Christian followers of Jesus got the chance to show religious liberty worked, ONLY THEN was there an empirical observation.
You want everyone to feel indebted to anabaptists without admitting how much they are indebted to others that were fighting their own struggles and altogether created a change that aided them all.
My beef is the others really didn't struggle at all. They just went from persecuting these groups to deciding, hey, maybe this isn't necessary after all. I am glad they went that direction certainly, but crediting them? Hardly.
I will say the ideas of the Reformation, Age of Reason, etc,...helped throw off papal tyranny. Sure. And that there were great men like George Washington, who though deeply religious, was probably not a Christian, that helped immensely get these ideas into law formally by establishing the USA, but by the time of the Constitution, these things had overtaken much of the Western world in many regards.
I think it's important to note that our form of government did not take on the secular bent of the French revolution, but that our revolution held to some concept of faithfulness to God, however one wished to interpret that.
Are we straight yet?
I don't know. Are we?
I think without the examples of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Anabaptist influence in the centuries prior, you would not have seen such a move to seperation of Church and State because the rulers all pretty much felt it was necessary.
I also want to point out that even in places like Mass, there was a move towards separation of Church and State because neither the Pope, nor the State, had the right to control and appoint the clergy. Places like Rhode Island took this all the way, and adopted Anabaptist theology, which is why Baptists were generally Calvinist except in this area.
So all over the colonies, in one form of another, there was a strong move towards separation of Church and State, even in places where there were discriminatory religious laws, and this occured while the establishment and rulers in Europe were rejecting such ideas. This process began long before the founders were borne, and as such, they grew up in this climate of religious liberty that had already been founded.
So by the time the Enlightenment got into full swing, the issue of separation of Church and State had largely been settled, and even places with an official Church, such as England, began to moderate as well.
I would say the Enlightenment represents an expansion of what the Christians accomplished in advocating freedom of conscience, not the other way around.
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