Showing posts with label Christian Nation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Nation. Show all posts

Friday, June 26, 2015

Louie Gohmert tells the Supreme Court: Jesus’ law more important than constitutional law


But Louie, it is not just Moses that is depicted in or on (the East Pediment) the building that occupies 1 First Street, Northeast, Washington, D.C.. You seem to leave out of your narrative that Moses is not given any special emphasis in the numerous depictions:  his figure is not larger than the others;  he is not displaying any type of dominance over the other figures; nor is the Decalogue (a hotly contested notion at best) written in full.  " Over time, the use of two tablets has become a symbol for the Commandments, and more generally, ancient laws. Tablets signify the permanence of the law when “written in stone.

Specifically in the frieze mentioned, Moses is holding two tablets (let's assume the Ten Commandments),but only commandments six through ten are visible usually considered the more secular of commands.  That would fit with Weinman's design for said frieze,
Weinman’s training emphasized a correlation between the sculptural subject and the function of the building. Gilbert relied on him to choose the subjects and figures that best reflected the function of the Supreme Court Building. Faithful to classical sources and drawing from many civilizations, Weinman designed a procession of “great lawgivers of history” for the south and north walls to portray the development of law. Each frieze in the Courtroom measures 40 feet long by 7 feet, 2 inches high and is made of ivory vein Spanish marble
And, no Louie Christ did not define marriage between one man and one woman.
“It is a matter of a constitutional crisis when the Highest Court in the land not merely strikes down and says that their opinion is more important than Moses’, depicted up there in the center point of this room, more important than Moses’, depicted in the marble wall over the Supreme Court, holding the Ten Commandments,” the congressman said on the House floor.

“The Supreme Court says theirs is more important than the opinions established and stated by Jesus Christ when he said–and he was quoting Moses–that a man shall leave his mother and father, a woman leave her home, and the two will come together and be one flesh, and what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
  “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
— U.S. Constitution, Article VI, clause 3

Louie Gohmert tells the Supreme Court: Jesus’ law more important than constitutional law

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods” - Salon.com

Yes, another book to add to my list. What intrigues me is the overall premise behind the book, the "a city upon a hill" reference. Although I was aware of this metaphor, I never considered the ramifications in regards to the "Christian Nation" push by the Reich; especially in regards to their love of all things Puritan. It is definitely something to explore,,,

 See also: We are not a Christian nation: Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and the eternal lie of the “city upon a hill” - An excerpt from "One Nation Under Gods: A New American History"
As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,” would have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan, the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years “dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion.”

The incessant citation of Winthrop’s metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned truth.

Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S. is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

[,,,]
Some of the stories in “One Nation, Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety.

The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods” - Salon.com

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Mike Huckabee Plans To Run For President To Fight The Secular Theocracy | Right Wing Watch

There's that phrase "Natural Law" again. And please do tell what "fundamental rights" have been "robbed" from you?
"We've divorced ourselves from an understanding that we cannot survive as a republic if we do not become once again a God-centered nation that understands that our laws do not come from man, they come from God," Huckabee said. "It is the natural law of God."

After insisting that he is not intending to create a theocracy, Robison piped up to declare that "we have a theocracy right now; it is a secular theocracy" and Huckabee readily agreed.

"That's it!" Huckabee said. "It is a humanistic, secular, atheistic, and even antagonistic toward Christian faith, and that's what we need to understand. Our basic fundamental rights are being robbed from us, taken from us piece by piece."
Secular Theocracy? Dictionary much,,,

Mike Huckabee Plans To Run For President To Fight The Secular Theocracy | Right Wing Watch

Friday, June 21, 2013

Barton Backs Down: ‘Christian Nation’ Advocate Corrects Some Of His Bogus Statements About U.S. History | Americans United

It's a start, but a long way to go. Think every time his mouth opens and a lie comes out he should be fined for disinformation. Also it should be noted that the work of Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus, IMHO has been just as important.
Barton posted the updated video on his WallBuilders website this week, and because Throckmorton has made it something of a mission to debunk Barton, he compared Barton’s 2007 statements with his newer ones. He concluded that the pseudo scholar has made progress toward the truth, but quite a bit of distortion still remains in Barton’s version of history.
Barton Backs Down: ‘Christian Nation’ Advocate Corrects Some Of His Bogus Statements About U.S. History | Americans United