I was reading an article in the Opinion section of the October 4 edition of The Sun newspaper titled Free Society. It was written by someone named R. Sean Baldwin, a resident of Redlands, California.
I'll print it in its entirety:
The Pledge of Allegiance should remain exactly how it was written. When Francies Bellamy, a Baptist minister and very active socialist, wrote the pledge in 1892, it didn't have "under God" in it. In fact, it didn't even have "United States of America" in it.
The original test of the pledge was the following:
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
It was that way until 1924, when "United States of America" was added. It read:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands -- one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
That is until 1954, while the country was in the grips of the Red Scare and being subjected to the atrocious McCarthy hearings, that Christian nationalists petitioned to add "under God."
Ever since then, we have allowed this third revision to stand.
It's about time that citizens, conscientious Christians included, stand up to those who pressure us to label this great nation of ours as anything but a free society. Christians feel that because the Founding Fathers were Christian, it means they were for a Christian nation.
This is far from the truth. The Treaty of Tripoli states unequivocally that the United States is no way a Christian nation. The Founding Fathers may have been Christian, but their common affiliation was as Masons, a group of free-thinking secular deists.
Deism is the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena and giving no supernatural revelation.
Christian fundamentalists, evangelicals, mainly, are trying to get theistic government in through the back door into a society based strictly on secular self-rule, in the same way they're trying to get religion in through the back door in science class.
This country was founded on self-rule, not rule by monarchy nor as a religious state. Monarchy and religious rule are exactly what people were escaping when they came here.
[Note: Emphasis added mine. ]
The bolded portions are those by which I'm concerned with. Can anyone provide some input regarding the matter, as I am a bit skeptical as to its accuracy.
If The Infinity Program were not a forum, it would be a pie-in-the-sky project. “Faith is both the prison and the open hand.”— Vienna Teng, "Augustine."
Er. Okay, I am absent-minded and forgot about the sticky thread basically confirming that many of the founding fathers were anything but Christian. Basically, I want to know, then, if there is any truth in the claims highlighted, about any of the founding fathers. I'll look through the sticky and add another post if even this sought knowledge has already been answered.
If The Infinity Program were not a forum, it would be a pie-in-the-sky project. “Faith is both the prison and the open hand.”— Vienna Teng, "Augustine."
Yes, the Founding Fathers were Masons. While a lot of conspiracy theorists will say that this is proof that they were trying to found a New World Order or some such, I'd say that the Mason lodges of the late 1700s were a lot like the Mason lodges of today: places where moderately rich or rich white guys meet up and socialize.
SDNet: Unbelievable levels of pedantry that you can't find anywhere else on the Internet!
Whether or not the masons as an organization have any specific political projects, they do have ideals; and if a bunch of them form a government, it will reflect those ideals.
Additionally, anyone looked at the back of a $1 lately? Sure, that's only from the '40s, but it should be clear that something masonic has at least occasionally been up in government.
I'm totally open to the possibility of students not saying the pledge at all. How in Christ's penis does saying a group of preselected words in coordination make you patriotic, or a "true American"? It's simply a time wasting activity done in the mornings that somehow re-affirms, as if nothing else would, that we live in the USA.
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."
That too. I remember seeing a special on Chinese education, and watching those kids recite the chinese equivalent of the pledge of allegiance was downright scary. After that I felt roughly the same way about our pledge.
I'm willing to say it myself. I really DO pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and (more especially) to the United States of America.
But making kids who don't even understand it yet do so? Errrr.
Yeah, I remember doing it in kindergarten and not even knowing what half the words meant. I didn't know what a "republic" was, or how it could be "indivisible." I didn't get the concepts of "liberty" or "justice," I was just too young. And by the time I reached the age that I could understand what it meant, I had done the pledge so often that it was just rote memorization of a daily, meaningless ritual. I didn't think or care about it at all.
I mean, can we honestly expect a six year old, or even a twelve year old, for that matter, understand true patriotic love for one's country? I mean, I can understand having it in high school, where the students are capable of making honest and intelligent decisions regarding making a pledge to their country (I, for the record, did the pledge up until the invasion of Iraq, when I then lost faith in the current government to act responsibly; I thus decided that I wasn't going to pledge allegiance to the representation of such a government until the government proved to me that it was a capable and responsible instrument of the people).
SDNet: Unbelievable levels of pedantry that you can't find anywhere else on the Internet!
wolveraptor wrote:I'm totally open to the possibility of students not saying the pledge at all. How in Christ's penis does saying a group of preselected words in coordination make you patriotic, or a "true American"? It's simply a time wasting activity done in the mornings that somehow re-affirms, as if nothing else would, that we live in the USA.
I like how they do it in Venezuela. Every Monday morning, the National Anthem (actually just the first third, though IMO it should be the second third) is recited by the entire school, who have gathered in the main court-yard*. The rest of the days of the week, the students just go to class.
*I don't know what is done if the courtyard won't accomodate all the school and faculty.
A great many of the Founding Fathers were not Christians. Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine etc were Deists. Some fathers, however, were what was called
Enlightened Christians who amalgamated Christian beliefs with the rationale of the Enlightement.
Edit: For clarification, Deism was their religion largely in the Enlightenment, but it was not the only one. Deism isn't Christianity, however. Many father's believed in a divine creator who revealed himself through reasoned analysis of nature's design. This isn't the same as being Christian, although some Christians borrowed the concept from Deism later on.
