Religious Right's Christian Bridade on the March

[Freedom_from_Chains]

The Religious Right's "Christian nation" brigades are on the march again.
According to The Virginian-Pilot, Pat Robertson and other evangelical leaders in Virginia are planning a big prayer service next spring to mark the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown colony. Noting that English settlers raised a cross at Cape Henry when they landed in 1607, Robertson and Company hope to use that historical footnote to make a political point today.

"We want to reaffirm our Christian roots -- we are a Christian country," said John Blanchard, coordinator for the event that has been dubbed The Assembly 2007. "They did come ashore dragging a cross."

Blanchard insists that Christian character of Jamestown is clear. He cites the colony's chaplain and its founding charter, which calls for the spread of Christianity.

"We were started as a Christian nation," Blanchard told The Virginian-Pilot, "and I feel it's God's purpose we stay a Christian nation."


But Conn thinks Blanchard has a little more reading to do, noting that the charter for the Virginia Company
...did, indeed, demand that the prospective American colony "provide that the true word, and service of God and Christian faith be preached." But the charter added that the "true word" must be "according to the doctrine, rights, and religion now professed and established within our realme of England."
In other words, Jamestown was to be a bastion of the Anglican Church, the established faith of England. . Governor Thomas Dale in 1612 mandated "Lawes Divine, Moral and Martial" that decreed the death penalty for those who "speak impiously of the Trinity...or against the known articles of the Christian faith."

Those who cursed would have a bodkin "thrust through the tongue," and all immigrants to the new land were to report to the Anglican minister for "examination in the faith." Those who refused facing a daily whipping "until he makes acknowledgement."

Dale's rules were so draconian that they were abrogated on appeal to London, but the colony's leaders busily carried out other acts of religious intolerance over subsequent decades. Puritan clergy were banished, Quakers were fined, imprisoned and banished and Catholics were disqualified from public office. Those who objected to infant baptism were subjected to penalties....

So Blanchard, Robertson and the other non-Anglican "dissenters" are, in fact, getting ready to celebrate a centuries-old religious establishment that would have fined, whipped, imprisoned or banished them - or maybe put them to death. Individuals of their religious stripe were persecuted minorities then; today they are politically powerful and they seek to persecute others who fail their religious test.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/31/73143/588

[valerief]

1. I read quickly and thought this said Jonestown colony. It

wouldn't surprise me if the wingnuts decided to revive Jonestown and spin it as a great something or other to g_d.

[Warpy]

2. Funny how they conveniently ignore

everybody else who built this country, from the unabashedly secular founding fathers to the black slaves (most of whom were Muslim), the Chinese, the First Nations, the Jews, and a thousand other religious minorities and dissenters.

It's up to us to remind them that we live here, too, and that we're sick and tired of being bullied by ignorant, sanctimonious jerks whose only connection to Christ and his teachings is the theft of his name.

[NMMNG]

3. America is a Caucasian Male Nation

Think about it! 100% of the Founding Fathers were male and Caucasian. When the Constitution was formed Blacks were not considered full humans for purposes of citizenship, women were not allowed to vote and were essentially considered property either of their fathers or their husbands.


Of course the argument is BS, but it makes as much sense as the claim that America is a Christian Nation simply because a majority of the FF and settlers were Christians.

[Erika]

4. Christians condoned slavery and the Salem witch deaths

Why don't these modern religious right ever think of the needy and meeting their needs? It's because they are about money and power. That's it.

[Mist]

5. RW Xtians are forever confusing "colony" with "country." nt

[cosmik debris]

6. I wonder if they will celebrate the Spanish colonization

In 1575 (32 yrs before Jamestown) Spanish/Catholic settlers landed in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. We started off as a Catholic Nation! And god did not punish the Catholics by destroying their earliest colony. (God hated Jamestown and killed all its resident because one of them might have been Gay!)

Well, really I'm just poking fun at the fundies and I don't believe anything I just typed except the historical facts that the Catholics got here first and survived and the protestants got here second and died. God certainly has a strange way of endorsing and supporting his followers.

[trotsky]

7. Amazing how strong the myth is, that settlers came to America for "religious freedom"

When the reality is, many came here because they weren't allowed to persecute others to their liking.