If the Christian Right had been in control of the colonies
as so many of its propagandists often claim…
Our Constitution would’ve proclaimed America a Christian
Nation from the very beginning.
Of course, the Constitution never would have been written in
the first place because if the Christian Right had indeed been in charge, there
wouldn’t have been an uprising, much less a revolution. There is far too much emphasis in the
Christian Right on obedience to authority to allow that.
The Declaration of Independence would have never have been written
either, especially since its chief author, Thomas Jefferson, was barely even
Unitarian, if that.
The publication of Common
Sense would have been suppressed, its copies burned, and its author, Thomas
Paine, tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. Then he would have been hung for his writings
advocating the rights of the working class and women and the abolition of slavery, all of which he’d
done before the outbreak of the Revolution.
George Washington, a practicing Anglican (and later
Episcopalian) but a freethinking
practicing Anglican/Episcopalian, would not have been “Father of our Country”
because, besides the fact that we’d still have the monarch in London, England,
as its head-of-state, Washington wouldn’t have been politically correct under
the lash of theocratist Christian rule.
The freethinking Ben Franklin would have fled to France, probably
in company with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, if they knew what was good for
them.
John Adams, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian would have
returned to England and probably ended in prison or hanged, drawn, and
quartered for having participated in an attempted democratic revolution
inspired by Tom Paine, if, that is, Paine had escaped the Christianist hangman
in the colonies.
Sam Adams would have been hanged, drawn, and quartered,
either by the British or by the Christianist government in the colonies.
The French Revolution may never have happened. Irish republicanism, which had Tom Paine as
its mentor, may not have gotten off the ground.
Slavery would never have been abolished. In fact, it probably would have spread across
the continent and to each newly acquired territory. Of course, that’s assuming American
independence, which, as stated above, might not have happened at that early
stage if America were a Christian Nation.
However, once Mother England demanded an end to slavery, America would
doubtlessly have risen up to defend, preserve, and propagate the property rights
of men to hold other humans as property in the name of Christianity.
A religious civil war would have been inevitable. The official state-supported religion in the
colonies of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and
New York was Anglicanism, or the Church of England. The official state-supported religion of
Massachusetts Bay (including Maine), Connecticut, and New Hampshire was
Congregational, from Calvinist Puritanism.
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island had no official state-supported
religion and would have been considered the battleground. Imagine the worst of the religious wars of
the Reformation (both of the movement against Rome and of the movement within
itself) and the millennium and a half long feud between Sunni and Shia Muslims
combined, then multiply exponentially.
Religion mixing with state has nothing to do with salvation of anyone
and everything to do with power.
At the time of the American Revolution, the Scottish
Episcopal Church was not in communion with the Church of England. Often mistaken to be an outgrowth of English
domination of Scotland, it is equally a direct descendant of the original
Scottish Church to the current Church of Scotland, only being the one that adopted
episcopal (by bishops) rather than presbyterian (by presbyters, “elders”) church
polity.
Until the end of the Penal Laws in Ireland, the Scottish
Episcopalians shared the same status, or rather lack of status, that other
non-Catholic, non-Anglican churches had under rule from London. These, along with Puritans
(Congregationalists), Separatists (such as the Pilgrims of New Plymouth),
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, etc., were all
lumped together as “Dissenters”, while members of the Church of England were
the only sect recognized as “Protestants”.
It was because of this that after Independence the American
church sought to have its candidates for episcopal office consecrated by Scottish
bishops, since they did not swear an oath to the Crown, and it is for this
reason that the American church took the name Episcopalian.
2 comments:
Well said, Chuck.
Yes, indeed! It is Feb 2014... what card should be played now? Iron cleaveth not to clay!!!
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