Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wannago]

[Nowhere Man]

I do have to agree with wannago in this respect. The separation of Church and State that we have only prohibits state-based religion, a response, I assume, to the Church of England.

As to the Adams quote, I feel disenfranchised as I'm not a "religious" person. That said, I'm not a slave-holder either.

My high regard for the Founding Fathers begins and ends with the government that they set up, not their religious beliefs or other practices.

Yes, many of them spoke of God overseeing their proceedings, but, at that time, was their room for an atheist Founding Father? Would he, like women or slaves, have been accepted?

I do agree with Bobster about the Civil War. It was Christians vs. Christians.

As for the modern day, America is a country of many faiths and even non. It is, by any definition, not a nation strictly for Christians. While I don't mind if Dubya talks to God, I would prefer a President who can talk in a press conference and otherwise explain himself coherently rather than getting angry that his own logic leaks like a sieve and then retreat into religion to defend himself when his own actions are far from the acts of a "good Christian".

[Alias]

[Nowhere Man]

That depends on the "talking back".

When I "talked back" to my parents, they "talked back" to me.

When Dubya talks to God, does he get all pissy and say, "Only one question at a time", like he does with people he's representing?

Perhaps along with the State of the Union, we could have the "Questions for God Address".

First question:
Who would Jesus bomb?

[desultude]

[sonofthedarkstranger]

[Kuros]

[The Bobster]

[wannago]

[Ya-ta Boy]

First, I'd like to mention something about the deism part of this discussion. Washington, a mild deist, took office as president in early 1789. Within a month the French Revolution broke out. I think it was in 1794 that the radicals proclaimed the Cult of the Supreme Being and closed the (Catholic) churches. What I'm trying to say is that some Deists were quite radical in their non- (even anti-) Christian beliefs. I have no idea if any of the Americans went that far in their beliefs, but it is clear that Deism is not a type of Christian denomination.

I want to point out again that I agree completely with those who have said the Founding Fathers were trying to set up a system that avoided the problems of a state religion. With Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Baptists and Quakers, trying to choose one as the state religion would have torpedoed any attempt at a union. [Has anyone noticed how looooooooong Christian Prostestant church names are? Why can't we have simple, short names like Shi'a?]

The Civil War

There was an economic element to the Civil War, but I think it gets more attention than it deserves. The key issue was the balance of power between the States and the Federal government. Does a state have the right to secede? The first two years of the war were about that. The abolitionists were not enthusiastic supporters of the war because Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery. It wasn't till the second year that Lincoln realized he needed the abolitionists' support (and a tool to block British/French recognition of the Confederacy) that he accepted the idea of converting the war into a crusade to free the slaves.

The Abolitionists were deeply influenced by their religious beliefs. I think I'm right in saying that the movement was originated by the Quakers who believed every person has a divine spark. Many of the abolitionist leaders were preachers. I think Julia Ward Howe and Harriet Beecher Stowe's husbands were both abolitionist ministers.

John Brown was a terrorist. He hacked to death 5 people in Bloody Kansas and his raid on Harper's Ferry in late 1859 was an attempt to start a slave rebellion. He was hanged Dec. 2. The presidential election of '60 was held during the inflamed passions that his raid created.

PS: Kuros, who changed those words in the Battle Hymn of the Republic?

PS#2: For lit fans: Have any of you read Steven Vincet Benet's "John Brown's Body"? It's terrific.


Here are 3 of the 4 paragraphs of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Speech (March 4, 1865). I think he explains it best, as usual:

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war�seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

[desultude]

Did Lincoln write his own speeches? I can't imagine anything so moving coming directly out of the mind and mouth of a president today.

Would the young southern poor white men, who had more in common economically with the slaves than with the slave holders, shed their blood for the peculiar instititution?

I doubt it, really, if it hadn't been wrapped in the cloak of anti-federalist states' rights. And states' rights has not been an entirely regressive issue. The anti-federalists in the north at the time of the writing of the Constitution and the time of the revolution were in some ways more progressive and liberty minded than the Federalists. Some of the original states had full (white) suffrage prior to the Constitution. They had much different ideas regarding money and taxation. But mostly they had a profound distrust of the endowing the Federal government with as much power as given in the Constitution.

I am not a scholar of the Civil war (although this discussion has sparked some interest) but I do believe that these two distinct political ideologies, federalism and anti-federalism, were at war also. I think many southerners were also opposed to slavery, but wanted to deal with it themselves, not as dictated by the federal government.

It has always been too convenient to paint southern white culture with the tar of slavery and racism, thus casting the north in the glow of progressive values.

[Ya-ta Boy]