To a cheering crowd, Terry shouted that ours is a “Christian nation,” that “we don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Mohammad, we don't worship Allah,” and that anyone who doesn’t like “the way we do things” should “get out.”
[...]
... But he went further when he said that we–“Americans,” presumably–are Christians who worship “one God, and his name is Jesus Christ.” ...
I won't touch the Rev.'s personal theology. It certainly is a central tenet of Christianity that there is one God and that Jesus is God. But it's precisely NOT what the American Founding was all about. The key Founders believed all monotheists, including Muslims, worshipped the same God.
And here is John Adams on the notion that Jesus is God:
"An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent, omnipresent omniscient Author of this stupendous Universe, suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea, and it has stupified the Christian World. It has been the Source of almost all of the Corruptions of Christianity."
-- John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816.
2 comments:
Jon - well done - and in keeping with your "Islam in America" article with James Hanley.
Here's one of my favorite Jefferson quotes:
"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination."
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (ME 1:67)Memorial Edition (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors)
20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04.
Thanks.
Yes that quotation of Jefferson's is one of my favorites too!
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