Sarah Palin said the United States should rededicate itself to seeking God’s will in a video released Friday by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Palin is a young-earth creationist who believes she will see Jesus in her lifetime. As mayor of Wasilla she tried to stack the local school board with creationists and tried to pressure the local library to remove books which social conservatives found offensive.
This is hardly the first time that Palin has expressed such theocratic sentiments confusing “God’s will” with governing. In June 2008 she described the Iraq war as a “task that is from God” and even described the Alaska gas pipeline as “God’s will.”
As repulsive as these beliefs are, they are apparently mainstream in the GOP. For example, George Bush has expressed the belief that God chose him to be President and advised him to go to war in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld used biblical imagery to sell Bush on the Iraq war. Jacques Chirac has also been quoted as saying that Bush had justified the Iraq war based upon biblical prophesy.
Not to mention Huckabee saying, that it would be easier to rewrite the Consitution to bring it into line with the Bible than to rewrite the Bible to bring it into line with the Constitution. This was one of the most moronic non sequitrs ever spoken during a presidential campaign, in my view.
What disappoints me is that the BGEA would associate itself with Sarah Palin. The old man’s son is really running the outfit into the ground and bending lower and lower for the religious right every year.
How about we follow our forefathers advice and keep church and state seperated. You are free to worship as you will in the USA, count your blessings. We left England because of religious persecution. HELLO?????????????
Sarah Palin/Fabio 2012!
‘We left England because of religious persecution.’
Well, technically, ‘we’ left Holland because ‘we’ were afraid ‘our’ kids were growing up to be more Dutch than English.
If ‘we’re’ the Pilgrims.
If ‘we’re’ the Jamestown colonists then ‘we’ left England so that we could find gold and grow tobacco and get really rich.
If ‘we’re’ the settlers of the Crown Colony of Georgia, then ‘we’ left England because we were deep in debt and didn’t want to go to debtor’s prison.
People came to what is now the US for a lot of reasons. Fear of religious persecution was one of them. It’s worth noting, however, that the only colonies founded because of active and ongoing persecution were Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Both colonies were founded not because of religious persecution of religious minorities in Britain, but religious persecution of both Puritan dissenters and Quakers in Massachusetts.
It’s also worth noting that, in Rhode Island, Anne Hutchinson immediately turned around and started persecuting those who dissented from her. 🙁
Another take on the “we left England to escape religious persecution” is to ask who was doing the persecuting. Catholics left to escape Protestant persecution and Protestants left to escape Catholic persecution. One of the best things about the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing is that it keeps all the Christian sects from persecuting each other.
The next time someone says that America is a Christian nation, ask them which one (Mormon, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, etc). If they pick one, then they are denigrating all of the others. If they say all of them, then they are making light of all the differences between the sects.
‘If they say all of them, then they are making light of all the differences between the sects.’
Modern ecumenical Protestantism pretty much accepts the differences between sects as largely cosmetic and unimportant. Liberal Catholicism (sadly dying out since the end of the Cold War turned John Paul II’s attention to AIDS, gay rights, and abortion full time) essentially says that any ‘good Christian’ is a Catholic in God’s eyes regardless of their actual denominational affiliation, and thus there is no need for conflict between Catholics and other sects.
Plenty of Christians downplay the differences between sects and accentuate the importance of shared belief.
The problem is that the fastest growing Christian denominations are the charismatic, evangelical, and Pentecostal wings of various ‘mainstream’ denominations. Like the Puritans of old, they have a persecution complex and proclaim their victimization by their neighbors… but their real goal is to make everyone else who makes any claim to Christianity do things their way and to enforce Christian mores on everyone else. Thus, to a certain degree, much of the ‘persecution’ of which they complain can be considered self-defense.
‘Catholics left to escape Protestant persecution and Protestants left to escape Catholic persecution. ‘
The majority of the religious groups that came to the US came not to escape current persecution, but out of remembrance of past persecution and/or fear of future persecution… or other issues entirely. The ‘Pilgrims’ were Separatist Puritans. They had left England because of their belief in the necessity of establishing a new Church of England to replace the old one. They were safely settled in religiously diverse and tolerant Holland and were not being persecuted at all.
They were, however, very concerned that their children would grow up speaking Dutch instead of English, would convert to Lutheranism, Anabaptism, or the Dutch Reformed Church and abandon the work of starting a new Church of England, and would lose all interest in an ultimate return to England.
At the time Lord Baltimore established the Maryland colony, Catholics in England were doing rather well. Many, however, wished to have their own ‘country’ where they could manage things themselves and no longer suffer the political and social penalties of English recusancy laws. There were also memories of Edwardian and Elizabethan persecutions, despite the far more Catholic-tolerant policies of the first four Stuart kings, and a fear of new persecutions as a result of the political conflicts within the Stuart family and the reaction to James II.
The most serious ongoing religious persecution in the United Kingdom during the period of early colonization was the crackdown on ‘covenanters’ (Scottish Presbyterians) during the reigns of Charles II and James II. While individual Presbyterians did escape to various foreign colonies, no colony was ever established for them. The active, ongoing persecution of the sect by the crown made that politically impossible.