Where has Thomas Jefferson been all my life? Ok, I know, he's been dead, but why wasn't I taught more about him in school? Aside from the fact that he was the second president and he wrote the Declaration of Independence, we were never taught much about him. At least not where I went to school. I know from later reports that he was a slave owner and had a fling with a slave and had children. Bad, very bad. But the words that he writes are AMAZING! And so very much needed today! He had a facinating insite into the human psyche that I would never have expected. Most people don't have that depth of understanding today. He was a devout christian but his belief system was more like a UU. If all christians were like this man, I would never say another word against them!
I am doing more research for my rant on spirituality and came across his Act for the Establishment of Religious Freedom. What a wonderful, unifying, humanistic piece of legislation! (surprisingly enough, that is NOT an oxymoron!)
This is the bit that truly impressed me the most because it makes so damn much sense even from a christian point of view:
...that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical;...
To put that in plain old, everyday American English, if god, who is perfectly capable of forcing every man to believe in him, doesn't do so, why should man, who is, by his very nature fallible, be allowed to.
This also addresses Faith Based initiatives: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical
If there was ever a more powerful and valid argument for the necessity of the separation of church and state, this is it. And it is written by a christian! By one of the original and most well-respected founding fathers of this country!! If anyone ever needs an argument for the "This is a Christian Country" line, this is it!!! If Jefferson knew "under god" was in the pledge of allegience he would have a heart attack, let alone that there is such a christian resistance to taking it out.
I am still working on my rant but this was so cool I had to run right over and put it in. I'm going to read lots more Thomas Jefferson too. :oD
at 1:03 PM :: ~#~
