posted on August 28, 2001 10:45:29 PM newWasn't it the Protestants, an off-group of Christianity that first settled here? They interpreted the Bible in a "less harsh" way which the Christians objected to, calling them demonic. Any group or person that swayed from being a true Christian was deemed demonic, allowing Christianity to gain it's stronghold. Is this incorrect spazmodeus?
kraft,
Any group that worships Jesus Christ, regardless of how they interpret the Bible, is regarded as Christian.
Collectively, people known as Protestants (an umbrella term encompassing Episcopalians, Methodists, Calvinists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, etc) forms one of the largest groups of Christians in the United States and the world. Catholics account for the rest.
Puritans founded this country, and they were the most intolerant bunch of Christians you are ever likely to meet. Laughably, they were as despotic as the churchmen they protested against in England. They hung Quakers, they hung witches, they ruined lives, they ran anybody who didn't conform to their idea of a good Christian right the hell out of town. They jammed their religion down the throats of the New England Indians and precipitated a massive Indian uprising in 1675, in which the Indians almost ran them out of the country. But the Indians lost and the godly men of Massachusetts and Connecticut executed the surviving warriors and sold their women and children into slavery in the West Indies. By the 1700s, New England's native population numbered in the mere hundreds.
This was all the work of white, Christian males, operating under a doctrine of "manifest destiny" -- a belief that God had made the white Christian superior to the "heathen savages" and that it was part of the Divine plan that white Christians should take ownership of the New World.
The white, Christian male built this land into what it is. And yes, as Borillar pointed out, he did it on the backs of slaves and immigrants and anybody else unlucky enough to be poor and hungry and in need of work. But all of America's great industries -- the factories, the railroads, the steel mills, the mines -- you name it. Virtually all of it was brought to fruition and success by white Christian males.
posted on August 28, 2001 10:58:16 PM new
Spaz, I'm not trying to argue with you when I go on about this -- just chatting. The thing that strikes me is that Yes, white people have had the money and the power to do many things. But who did the actual work? Does the black or Chinese worker who sweats and dies building the railroad contribute less than the railroad owner?
A note about the real Manifest Destiny. It was, if I recall right, part of the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that it was our duty as Americans to go spread our ways to wherever in the world that we could reach. That was at the time that colonialism was at its meridian and America wanted to be part of it too. But in this day and age, 'manifest destiny' is just another way to say that someone's policy is arrogrant to the extreme.
posted on August 28, 2001 10:59:37 PM new
Well........sorta'. The philosophy of manifest destiny hadn't occurred to the pilgrims who came here to find relief, and those worthies didn't found the country. Manifest Destiny was a later high belief in the superiority of the republican (by that, operations of a republic) point of view, and the actual term was coined by a democrat named John L. O'Sullivan in 1845.
The country had been founded by then and the philosophy was used in support of the grave and arrogant actions in taking the remainder of the continent for the american way.
Like to say "we're here, so that means we should be here, and here is wherever we wish it to be".
posted on August 28, 2001 11:12:12 PM new
Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine bored the piss out of me back in history classes, but I have definitely seen the term applied to the objectives and attitudes of the English colonials who came here in the 1620s and 1630s. Could be authors I've read have used the term more generically, as in lower case "manifest destiny." In any case, the colonial Puritans did indeed did believe that God had made this land theirs for the taking. In fact, they believed that the smallpox epidemics that wiped out more than half of New England's Indians even before the Pilgrims got here (the contagion was spread by European traders who had been trafficking with the Indians for years before the Pilgrims arrived) was the hand of God at work, clearing the way for their entry into the new world.
posted on August 28, 2001 11:24:36 PM new
As far as Protestants being Christians, I know that's true today, but when Christianity came to this country, the Protestants (the protestors of Christianity of the time) were a group upon themselves, considered to be evil because they wanted people to learn to read and form their own opinions about the Bible teachings and not rely on the Christian "holy people" to be the interpreters of what what was meant.
As far as North America as an industrialized nation, I agree with you, but like you and Borillar state, much of that was at the expense of people who weren't white.
I know I've been jabbering away and have talked about now and then, but I assumed when Mr. NC Representative referred to building this country, he was talking about from the start and not the last century, and I didn't (don't) feel that "white men" and Christianity is what built this nation.
But I do understand what you are saying spaz...completely.
posted on August 28, 2001 11:31:19 PM new
Borillar,
Traditionally in this country we give credit to the movers and shakers, not the laborers. Even today, we have our Bill Gates and Steve Cases, regardless that their empires are dependent on the efforts of many other people. Is it right? Is it just? I don't know. That's just the way we do things.
posted on August 29, 2001 12:33:47 AM new....but I have definitely seen the term applied to the objectives and attitudes of the English colonials who came here in the 1620s and 1630s
Applied now, sure, but you can find Christians now who would lay claim to having created God.
posted on August 29, 2001 07:57:10 AM new``Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity,'' the letter says. ``Every problem that has arrisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.''
The entire email was not revealed in the article but a little context was supplied by the sentence which follows it in which a cause/effect relationship is implied. Note the use of departure from God's law and the disenfranchisement of White men. So in other words our lives would be without problems if it weren't for the existence of non-whites and non-Christians. How else could it be read?
The first sentence is set up to create an either/or fallacy. Read in the negative, the assertion goes, "Two things did not make this country great, any people who are not white and not Christian." The next sentence first implies that our country is no longer great and then, the problems that prevent its continued greatness result from the inclusion of non-white non-Christians.
So, following the thinking of the email, how can we restore the greatness of the past and insure its continuance? Easy. Just remove or sufficiently suppress the source of every problem: those who are non-white or non-Christian.
There's enough with the context to determine that the email was pure, unadulterated BS.
The question is, what individuals or groups in the nation could possibly engage in disseminating such information? Surely, they're not polically influential in any way!!!
