Any "Founding Fathers" Experts around??

[Rick Myers]

Have a time with my fave Freeper on another board, and he's claiming that in the early days of the Republic, Federal Buildings were routinely used as Churches on Sunday. Supposedly the Founding Fathers had no problem with this practice. So, A) Is it true?, and B)If so, when did it stop?

This guy's source is Rod Parsley, who wrote a book about religion in the US but spent the better part of the book bashing and spreading untruths about Islam. I hear Rod has a multi-million dollar house paid for by tithings???

[Avalux]

1. I've never heard of that occurring.

What I do know is that our Founding Fathers believed wholeheartedly in the separation of church and state. There's some good info on this snopes page, maybe you can find something with which to prove the Freeper wrong.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp

[displacedtexan]

2. Here you go...

http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=123

The reason for the original use of the Capitol as a church might initially be explained by the fact that there were no churches in the city at that time. Even a decade later in 1803, U. S. Senator John Quincy Adams confirmed: “There is no church of any denomination in this city.” 3 The absence of churches in Washington eventually changed, however. As one Washington citizen reported: “For several years after the seat of government was fixed at Washington, there were but two small churches. . . . Now, in 1837 there are 22 churches of brick or stone.” 4 Yet, even after churches began proliferating across the city, religious services still continued at the Capitol until well after the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Jefferson attended church at the Capitol while he was Vice President 5 and also throughout his presidency. The first Capitol church service that Jefferson attended as President was a service preached by Jefferson’s friend, the Rev. John Leland, on January 3, 1802. 6 Significantly, Jefferson attended that Capitol church service just two days after he penned his famous letter containing the “wall of separation between church and state” metaphor.

[bobbieinok]

14. Wallbuilders is David Barton's site...he's the main pusher of meme

that all founders were christians

a major student of the religious right/dominionists has a good article on Barton and his 'lies'

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/4/10/234829/696

Top Christian Nationalist Feels the Heat
by Frederick Clarkson
Sun Apr 10th, 2005 at 11:48:29 PM EST

David Barton is perhaps the leading proponent of the notion that the U.S. was once, and should again be a "Christian Nation." He wants to sell you on that idea. He has books and tapes to sell too. The problem is that his slick products and presentations don't stand up to scrutiny. For example, in 1996, the mainstream Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs wrote a detailed critique, debunking Barton's Christian nationalist notions. (the original has a link to this)

....

Barton is currently at the center of a growing series of contoversies in Washington, DC regarding his association with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN).


Frist recently invited his congressional colleagues to participate in a "private tour" of the U.S. Capitol building with Barton. Frist described the tour as a "Fresh Perspective on Our Nation's Religious Heritage" and that Barton is "a historian noted for his detailed research into the religious heritage of our nation."

A simple Google search turns up other disturbing information about Barton. Not only does he disseminate biased and misleading materials, he has a profound, and profoundly alarming political agenda. Last year, Beliefnet reported that Barton is on the board of The Providence Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist oriented organanizaton. Reconstructionism is an influential political theology whose proponents argue that the U.S. should be a Christian theocracy, under "Biblical law." (I wrote about this movement and its role in the Christian right in detail in my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.)

Lest anyone think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and that Barton is a fringe figure of no signficance, Roll Call reports that Barton often conducts such tours under the sponsorship of Members of Congress. He is also the Vice-Chair of the Texas Republican Party.

....

Farris, Barton, and others are disseminating Christian nationalist propaganda through a nationwide network of sectarian Christian schools and home schools, which many Christian Rightists see as the base for the longterm takeover the of the U.S. As I reported in Eternal Hostility, Chris Klicka, HSLDA's Senior Counsel and Director of State and International Relations has written, "Sending our children to public schools violates nearly every Biblical principle... It is tantamount to sending our children to be trained by the enemy."

....

[bobbieinok]

15. this is IMPORTANT.....David BARTON+WALLBUILDERS are NOT

trustworthy

[displacedtexan]

20. Facts are facts. The Capitol was used as a non-denominational...

church (only because there weren't any church
buildings at first-- after that, it was a "tradition"
until the Civil war period).

I live 10 blocks from the Capitol, where the tour guides
include the church service info if you ask about it.

[Bob3]

3. Sounds like complete bs to me

it wasn't like there were a lack of churches in the early days of the republic. hell that was, after the general store and the tavern the first building anybody built in a town was a Church. And the few (very few) federal buildings that were built were in established cites like New York, Philly and the like. There were and are no shortage of churches in these cities.

Maybe after the British burned washington down everybody had to make do with what was left standing but that's a reach - esp if you want try and make it look like policy.

[Rick Myers]

4. Thanks, good info!!!

:kick:

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. First, you're correct about the source.

Parsley is notorious for poor research and ignorance with respect to other religions. I guess some seminaries really don't require comparative religion courses. He is a joke as far as academic credentials are concerned. I'd be sorely tempted to dock a student for using him as a reference.

I'm a hack separation of church and state activist and I've never heard of this as a routine practice. Government buildings were sometimes used temporarily when church buildings were either damaged, inaccessible or absent altogether.

Remind him the Founding Fathers "had no problem" with slavery either.

[genie_weenie]

11. That's not true in regards to Slavery!

John Adams and Ben Franklin were both abolitionists.

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. Hence the quotes. Not only were they abolitionists, but...

several of the slave-owning founding fathers had conflicted feelings on the subject and openly published them. My point was that a common practice of that day doesn't necessarily have relevance to what is acceptable today. Two hundred plus years ago was a different world. We don't need church services in federal buildings. Someone has already explained the historical situation when DC was being constructed.

[genie_weenie]

16. I'm sorry, I missed your point entirely

Thanks for the re-direct!

[Pacifist Patriot]

17. Not at all. I can see where I wasn't at all clear.

[Mythsaje]

6. Plausible, but entirely beside the point...

The issue is whether the founding fathers wanted any particular brand of Christianity to have influence not granted to the others. They didn't. They wanted all the different sects, which were generally representative of a majority in each of the colonies, to be effectively equal as to not give one dominance over the others.

They were very knowledgable about European history, and how religious conflicts tore the continent apart, and didn't want to see history repeat itself here. Thus, religion and state were separated and kept apart from one another.

They probably saw religious groups using public buildings as no big deal as long as they didn't show any favoritism.

This becomes a problem nowadays because not only do we have several more sects of Christianity (some of which are considered heretical by their fellows) but we also have Eastern religions, Islam, and neo-paganism to contend with. And there's no way that "good Christians" would be willing to share public buildings with those "godless heathens."

So the only way to guarantee fairness is to bar ANY religious group from using these public buildings. If not for the bigotry of the few, everyone could take advantage of public property and it wouldn't be a problem.

Of course, I'm not citing any references...this is just my opinion on the matter.

[Pacifist Patriot]

8. Good point. It is beside the point.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. I am not aware of any govt buildings being used as houses of worship

after the articles were drafted and passed. I do know that efforts by Massachussetts and Virginia to financially support certain religions were seen as disgusting and eventually were scrapped. But it was a weird time. Pennsylvania had laws that barred puritans. Shakers were banned in other colonies and other sects were viewed with disgust and even arrested in still other places. Conversion to a banned cult would lead to your death.

Actually, during those early days, the only "federal" buildings that were being built were due to my hero Ben Franklin. Post offices.
His requirement that roads be built to allow post to be delivered by the govt was a driving force in national strength, security, and economic development. Between the commerce clause and Ben's civilizing efforts, our country grew up. But I have strong doubts that post offices were ever used as religious centers.

TO the contrary, most religions had money of their own and the owned land, buildings and thrived. Unless they died off like the shakers. And other cults.

[Pacifist Patriot]

10. I don't know about federal, but government buildings have been used

for religious services from before our founding to the present day. A neighborhood church severely damaged by Hurricane Frances met in an elementary school until repairs could be made. They just moved back into their rennovated property two months ago.

As the Europeans conquered the North American continent, single buildings were frequently used as the court house, town hall, school and church when communities were small and lacking resources.

It really doesn't matter if government buildings were allowed to be used as churches. It's whether the government entity denied the opportunity to any sect that asked for the same courtesy. I have no problem with the county school system accommodating the congregation of a damaged church...provided they are willing to do so for any religious organization in the same situation.

[Nye Bevan]

9. I found a few links

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-01,GGLD:en&q=%22federal+buildings%22+%22used+as+churches%22

It doesn't surprise me that much since the relevant sentence from the First Amendment is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". I suspect that originally this was interpreted literally; Federal buildings being used as churches is not the same as Congress "establishing a religion" in the same way that the Church of England is the established chrch in the UK.

[bluestateguy]

12. This strikes me as, uh, false.

nt

[happyslug]

18. More complicated then Separation of Church and state.

For example want we would call "Welfare" was run by the Churches in the Colonial Period but spent money raised in the form of Taxes. The big push to drop established churches in the US AFTER 1787 (the year the Constitution was adopted) was to end these welfare payments (and replaced them with instructions to go west and take land from the Indians, yes taking land from the Indians was the main US welfare system from about 1792 till 1872 when do to the economic hard times of the 1870s Cities started their own welfare programs, the States shortly followed but not completely till the Great Depression of the 1930s when everyone accepted you no longer could send the poor to the frontier). Massachusetts did NOT completely disestablished its Church till 1837 (Another Major Depression and thus another effort to reduce welfare costs of the state).

A second problem was until the invention of the High Speed Press and pulp paper (about 1850) the main form of reading material was linen paper. Expensive compared to Pulp paper. Given its expense they was a tendency to print limited editions of important notices and then ask the local Church leaders to read them to their parishioners. Most states did NOT require the Churches to read the notices to their Parishioners, but it was the best way at that time, to get the information of such notices to the people. Churches had bells not only to ring on Sunday, but any day of the Week when an important notice had to be told to the people (You heard the bell and went to Church to see what was so important to ring the bell). The States used the Churches to spread news.

A third requirement (more of the 1774-1820 period then afterward) was that the States required all militiamen (and that mean all men between 18 and 45) to attend militia Drill AFTER Church. For this reason in most older towns you will tend to see 2-3 Churches around the Public Square. As the men exited the Church they attend Militia Drill while they wives and families had a little town party. Note it was NOT one religion but ALL church members (and Church non-members) attended the subsequent meeting.

Now in the Midwest (Ohio to the Dakotas) you even had the "Connecticut Agreement". Originally this applied only to Connecticut's "Western Reserve" of Land in North East Ohio but tended to be followed throughout the Midwest afterward. In the agreement written and passed as a statute by the state of Connecticut, if they was NOT enough families in a frontier area to support more than one Presbyterian or Methodist church, the Congregationalist of both churches could agree to share one church. The Preacher would be of one faith, but the Church Board would have more of the other faith. Whenever the population expanded to permit two churches the Churches would split up and a new one built for one of the two faiths (With any endowment of the old church being split between the two new churches). Notice no one was require to attend either church, but the state did address the issue of how such Churches could work together.

If you look at the above, no effort was made to IMPOSE religion on anyone, you did NOT have to attend any church or belong to any church (George Washington seems not to have join any Church after it was no longer to his political advantage to be a member of the Presbyterian Church, through he attend various church services throughout his life, Benjamin Franklin gave to all Churches for he viewed Religion as a public good but advocated no State Religion in Pennsylvania which had been the case since the time of William Penn 100 years before).

On the other hand the fact that often the only building big enough to hold most of the members of a Settlement was the local Church meant that Church was often used as a Meeting place in addition to being a Church. The preferred meeting place as the Village Green, but that was NOT acceptable if it was Raining or Snowing. Most Courthouses of the time period were much smaller and often only in the County Seat as opposed to the local towns. The best Communications system was between the Churches and the State and Federal Government piggy backed on these systems but NOT to encourage Religion but to minimize Government costs.

With the invention of the Railroad it was easier to get messages from place to place. Improved Mail service (especially after the reforms of the mail service first in Britain in the 1830s and then in the US in the 1870s) made the US mail a superior way to send broadcast messages (and this is tied in with a greater number of people who could read and write and thus did not have to be TOLD the news).

Thus by the US Civil War, Churches were no longer needed as news agencies, newspapers, the Mail and the Telegraph had replaced the pulpit as the most efficient news system (just like the net is replacing older news systems). Thus in the 1790s you see some movement to separate Church and State but clearly tied in with getting rid of welfare NOT to separate Church and State. Society's need for news had to be satisfied somehow and till the 1850s the most efficient news disbursing system was the Churches.

This can be seen in the lack of any effort to further the separation of Church and State till the 1870s (and the push for a Constitutional Amendment forbidding public funds to Churches). The chief reason for this lack of effort is the Government had nothing to replace the Church with for purposes of spreading news till the 1850s. On the other hand most Americans accepted that Church and State should be as separate as possible even by the time of the 1780s.

The problem thus is that while the US wanted to separate Church from State starting in the 1780s Society was NOT yet able to do so. Thus you had the intermixing of Church and State in that the State often used Churches as meeting places. The states often used Churches to get news and information to its Citizens. This dual situation is often cited by fundamentalist as the US founded on Christianity, but if you were to go back to that time the people of that time would have been shocked at such a statement. They understood that the church and state had to interact, but also understood that they had to be independent of each other.

[Laelth]

19. Got to say it again.

DU rocks! Fast, accurate research from members of the reality-based community.

Our strength is the truth ... for the truth is on our side.

:dem:

-Laelth