The "Get-a-Job" Fallacy
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Until you send us this article, readers of this page will have to be content with the following dialogue on American OnLine's "Separation of Church and State" Discussion Board.
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Subject: Re: Warped religion In article <1998060600015900.UAA00933@ladder03.news.aol.com>, edarr1776 @ aol.com (EDarr1776) writes: >I said earlier, of the Mayflower Compact: >>>It is exactly what it is famous >for being -- the first example of self-government in America. It says >nothing about religion -- who prays, when or where, in what underwear, after >what Baptism, using which Bible, etc., etc. It binds no one religiously, but >everyone civilly.<< > >Kevin responded: >>Your definition of "religion" is twisted, warped, even >malicious. >Your definition of "religion" is an insult to every man who signed the >Constitution. >True religion (Jas 1:27) is the backbone of civil society and peaceful, >prosperous >human relations. <<< > >You said it was a religious document. I called your bluff. So you call my >definition "twisted." > >Is that how we know the Christian? When truth shines, he denies it and >insults those who tell it? > >The Mayflower Compact is the first example of self-government by Europeans in >America. The document is itself not religious. As I noted, it does not deal >with religion at all -- though it is couched in phrases that are themselves >religious -- and non-binding here. I can't help wonder what the psychological term for the opposite of
"paranoid" is. Someone believes that others are out to get him, we call
paranoid. But imagine a person like Solomon Rushdie who refused to believe that anyone was
out to get him? What would you call him? Ed refuses to believe that there is anything
religious in the Mayflower Compact. >I cannot help it if the truth hurts, Kevin. I resent your resorting to >maligning my motives, definitions and interpretations, when history turns out >not to have gone quite the way you wish it had. > >Ed Something has to be said about your motivations, when your interpretations and definitions are so far removed from reality. The United States Supreme Court saw the religious nature of the Mayflower compact, and Justice Brewer later wrote more about it and similar charters:
[As an aside, I'm reminded of the contrast between the Supreme Court when it was Christian and the modern supreme Court after apostatizing into Secular Humanism. Justice Brewer says the identification of early American civil life with Christianity was "marvelous." In County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 US 573, 604, 106 L Ed 2d 472, 501-502, 109 S Ct 3086 (1989), the Court editorialized, "The history of this Nation, it is perhaps *sad* to say, contains numerous examples of official acts that endorsed Christianity specifically." What was once a good thing, is now said to be bad. The next step, of course, is to deny that they ever happened. This is Ed's strategy. John Eidsmoe (Christianity and the Constitution, p. 408) reports of a case in which
Back to the 1892 Supreme Court:
The formation of civil government was an act of religious obedience, in accordance with Biblical teachings. The civil magistrates were the "ministers of God." The historical and cultural context of all these charters is that the religious language is important, binding, and official. There is no evidence at all that the religious language in the Mayflower Compact was "non-binding." Sorry Ed. Kevin C. Subject: Pilgrims, Businessmen, and Mayflower Compact I noted that two thirds of the signers of the Mayflower Compact were not religious refugees. Kevin said: >>According to Gerald Murphy, who posted the Compact on The Cleveland Free-Net years ago, ninety-percent of those who signed the Compact were puritan separatists. Cite authority to the contrary because I don't believe your ipse dixit.<< Again, this is a fact that is not hidden in history -- you can read it in any number of places. Dr. Diane Ravitch, the distinguished educator who was Assistant Secretary of Education for Research and Improvement during the Bush Administration, puts it this way: "About a third of the passengers [aboard the Mayflower] were members of an English separatist congregation that had earlier fled to Leyden, the Netherlands, in search of religious freedom." You can do the math. If one third were religious refugees, two-thirds were not. "The colonists had negotiated an agreement with the Virginia Company of London that gave them the right to locate wherever they chose in that company's vast holdings and to govern themselves." But as she explained earlier, the Mayflower had been delayed by rough seas, and they missed their goal "and anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor off of Cape Cod. Since it was late autumn, they decided to make their landing there rather than to sail on. And since they were no longer in the territory for which they had a patent, they signed a covenant before they landed in order to establish a basis for self-government by which all of them were bound." You can read Ravitch's introduction and the Compact itself in The American Reader, Words that Moved a Nation, edited by Ravitch and published by Harper/Collins in 1990. A major thinker (if not quite a historian), a major publisher, and real history -- a good combination. The Mayflower Compact is the very first entry in Ravitch's book. "On the day after Christmas, the 102 settlers disembarked at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. Those who had signed the Compact became the governing body of the Plymouth colony, with the power to elect officers, pass laws, and admit new voting members. The covenant entered into on that November day on a ship at anchor in a wilderness harbor established the basis for self-government and the rule of law in the new land." Ed Subject: Re: Pilgrims, Businessmen, and Mayflower Compact So how many of the passengers were "voting members?" What percentage of the passengers signed the Compact? It would be 150 years before non-Christians would be allowed to obtain citizenship in the colonies of the New World. The Mayflower Compact was a Christian Theocratic legal instrument, signed by Christians. Christians are concerned about good order in society, and so they combine themselves "together in a civil body politick" in order to "advance the Christian faith." Atheists generally do not. Kevin C.
Subject: Re: Mayflower Compact Ed seems to think that Christians do nothing but preach, go to church, and engage in religious liturgies, and if he proves that someone farms, engages in commerce, or establishes any kind of civilization, he is not a Christian, but probably a Secular Humanist. People left Europe for the New World because they wanted to worship freely, without having their religion dictated by the State. These people (wrongly, IMHO) believed that the Bible required them to form civil governments, which they did. The act of forming a civil government was seen by them to be a religious act. Penn's charter ( http://www.constitution.org/bcp/frampenn.htm ) is a good example of early colonial governments. Governments were established in religious obedience to the commands of God. In article <19990419021620.22581.00002325@ng146.aol.com>, edarr1776 @ aol.com (EDarr1776) writes: >Kevin said: >>The "purpose" was to extend the Kingdom of Christ. The oath >excluded from public office all who were outside the established religious >boundaries.<< > >No on both counts. The purpose was to establish a colony. Why not just live in chaos? Why establish a government? Answer: because the Word of God commands it. The establishment of a colony was the establishment of a religion. The Mayflower Compact created a Theocracy. >It was hoped that >by doing so, they would extend the Glory of God -- but their purpose was to >settle down and farm the New World. And the reason why they wanted to "settle down and farm the New World" was because they wanted to obey the Word of God, which commands men to settle, live orderly lives, and till the Garden. Either Ed is ignorant of the motivations of Christian colonists in the 1600's or he is attempting to deceive the readers of this Board. No one ever responded to a previous post of mine on this subject, so here goes again: Subject: The Myth of Commercial Pilgrims Some secularists on this Board have suggested that those who came to America in search of religious freedom were more interested in trade than in establishing a Godly Theocracy.
George Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.1, p.319 Just because a given historical source indicates that a group of early americans were seeking gold, or seeking trade does not mean they weren't establishing a Theocracy. The Bible requires all good Theocrats to accumulate gold and trade with others (Gen 2:11-12; 13:2; 24:35; Ps 112:1-3; Deut 8:18) The history of the Mayflower settlers indicates that they left their church in the Netherlands and established a new church. Thus, as highly-respected documentarian Henry Steele Commager notes,
The Mayflower Compact sets up what modern Humanists would call a "church-state." >The compact specifically set up a government that included the entrepreneurs >AND the religious refugees. The "religious refugees" were ALSO the "entrepreneurs." Not all the "refugees" were from a particular church in Leyden, but they all signed the Theocratic charter known as the Mayflower Compact. >They all took part in the government under the >Compact, under the terms of the Compact. Later, the Congregationalists >outnumbered the non-religious guys. >But at this point they didn't, and it >was a government by consent of the governed that they set up. It was a government for the Glory of God. We've gone over this before. Subject: Pilgrims, Businessmen, and
Mayflower Compact I noted that two thirds of the signers of the Mayflower Compact were not religious refugees. Kevin said: >>According to Gerald Murphy, who posted the Compact on The Cleveland Free-Net years ago, ninety-percent of those who signed the Compact were puritan separatists. Cite authority to the contrary because I don't believe your ipse dixit.<< Again, this is a fact that is not hidden in history -- you can read it in any number of places. Ed then posted the Ravitch quote. Only those church members who were willing to abide by the laws of the Calvinistic church-state created by the Mayflower Compact signed the compact. >I said: >>Such a document >>as a compact would be attested to by seal, if people had seals. In the >>absence of a seal, then an oath would be acceptable. These oaths should not >>be expanded to contravene the clear meaning of the document. > >Kevin said: >>The oaths amplify the meaning of the document.<< > >Sure, whatever. The meaning of the document is that they would make laws >together and obey the laws so made. It's clear from the text. Anyone can >read it. Not everyone can read the clear religious meaning of the document, and maybe this is what has Ed so confused, and makes his confusing posts so persuasive to some. Consider how a guide for the public school history text Triumph of the American Nation, published in 1986, omits material from the Mayflower Compact without informing the teacher that the document has been edited. Students, in discussing the document, are left with an incomplete under- standing of what motivated these early founders because they do not have all the facts. The Mayflower Compact is depicted solely as a political document with its more striking religious elements consored out. Here is the document as presented by the textbook company. The bold portions are missing from the textbook version:
Those who signed the Mayflower Compact were Christian Theocrats, not Secular Humanists, and would have vigorously opposed the myth of the "separation of church and state." Kevin C. |
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