Fundamentalist Christian AFA posts weak response to MRFF, then deletes it

Published On: April 7, 2015|Categories: News|2 Comments|

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In response to MRFF’s recent activism defending Constitutional basis of American governance,  AFA responds asserting their own fundamentalist Christian, theocratic vision for the USA.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has included the AFA on their list of extremist hate groups in the United States.

AFAwebsiteScreengrab

The page was originally published to the AFA site before mysteriously disappearing;
click here to enlarge saved screenshot of the AFA’s anti-Constitutional riposte

AFA Facebook post:

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Comment from MRFF volunteer F.J. Taylor

EASY money!

The religious right LOVES to quote Webster — but only his later quotes from his old age, when he had abandoned his youthful radicalism and free-thinking.

In the first place, Noah Webster, though certainly a Founder, was NOT a critically important or seminal Founder in the mold of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, et al, other than in view of his early strong Federalist views and publications — which at that time were strongly in favor of separation of church and state.  Though he was important as an early American lexicographer and educator his early works were all extremely secular.  (See below and attached.)

He was originally a (failed) lawyer, and later a teacher and journalist. He did not serve in the military at any time in any capacity, nor compose any national documents of note or importance (like Jefferson and Madison). Again, his most important work, which was done in his youth, was strongly secular in nature.

For example, in 1781, he stated;

“America sees the absurdities—she sees the kingdoms of Europe, disturbed by wrangling sectaries, or their commerce, population and improvements of every kind cramped and retarded, because the human mind like the body is fettered ‘and bound fast by the chords of policy and superstition‘: She laughs at their folly and shuns their errors: She founds her empire upon the idea of universal toleration: She admits all religions into her bosom; She secures the sacred rights of every individual; and (astonishing absurdity to Europeans!) she sees a thousand discordant opinions live in the strictest harmony … it will finally raise her to a pitch of greatness and lustre, before which the glory of ancient Greece and Rome shall dwindle to a point, and the splendor of modern Empires fade into obscurity.”

  — Noah Webster, quoted in “After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture” by Joseph Ellis (1979)

(Emphasis added.)

Again, in the November 3, 1783 edition of the Freeman Chronicle, Webster wrote;

The very idea of a system of religious principles and a mode of worship, prescribed and established by human authority, is totally repugnant to the spirit of christianity

Every establishment is only a milder term for tyranny….It is an insult to humanity, a solemn mockery of all justice and common sense, to assume that right of entailing our opinion and formalities of devotion upon posterity, or to exclude them from the protection or emoluments of government for a non-conformity dictated by conscience.

(Again, my emphasis. Quote from the attached essay, originally posted at http://candst.tripod.com/tnppage/qwebstrn.htm )

That is typical of his writing from this period — and one of many reasons the AFA (following David Barton and other “Liars for Jesus”) only publish the post 1808 quotes, and indeed, mainly those from the 1820s on, as he grew even more religious and authoritarian.

Of course, even with his fellow Revolutionaries and  Federalists, he was not always in good odor, denounced by Jeffersonian Republicans as “a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot,” “an incurable lunatic,” and “a deceitful newsmonger … Pedagogue and Quack.

A rival Federalist pamphleteer “Peter Porcupine” (William Cobbett) said Webster’s pro-French views made him “a traitor to the cause of Federalism,” calling him “a toad in the service of sans-cullottism,” “a prostitute wretch,” “a great fool, and a barefaced liar,” “a spiteful viper,” and “a maniacal pedant.” 

As to his lexicographical and educational efforts (arguably his most important contribution), his earliest work was deliberately secularized and non-sectarian, such as his speller, originally titled “The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language(1783) and later his “Part Three,” a reader (1785).

Webster’s Speller was secular by design. There was no mention of God, the Bible, or sacred events. “Let sacred things be appropriated for sacred purposes” as Webster wrote, believing at that time in a secularized state with a clear separation of church and state, and also that too-regular use of the name of a deity resulted in becoming too accustomed to it and thus profaning it.  (This thought is similar to the Jewish [and some Christian sects] tradition of not using the name of the Deity.)  Webster’s speller was a more secular successor to The New England Primer with its explicitly biblical injunctions.

Webster did indeed grew more religious and indeed made many pious statements  — but it was in his old age, as some old men do as they near the end of the line, hoping to assuage some   “deity” and get their earlier “sins” “forgiven.”

He also added religious themes to his textbooks. (After ca. 1840, Webster’s books lost market share to the McGuffey Eclectic Readers of Rev. William Holmes McGuffey – and even more religious tome in its way in its original editions, due to its author’s strong Calvinist (and bigoted and racist) POV, and the fact that the massive religious revival of the “Second Great Awakening” (or “Second Descent into Ignorant Superstition” as I prefer to call it) was in full swing.

 However, as noted, in his youth, Webster was somewhat of a free-thinker (if not a Deist outright) and a strong (indeed radical) Federalist, and as noted, a strong believer in the separation of church and state.

It wasn’t till 1808 that he began to relapse into his childhood Congregationalism, a strongly Calvinist system (and like much Calvinism of the day, bigoted and intolerant) which was descended from the Massachusetts and other New England churches of the Brownist Dissenters (aka Puritans who were [much later] dubbed “Pilgrims”).

Read the attached essay and his Wikipedia entry […]!!

SF,

Jim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster

https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/press-releases/2015/Noah%20Webster%20and%20separation.pdf

P.S. BTW, note that  the Webster quote (from later in his life) says “…OUGHT to be based…”   which demonstrates that (unlike the AFA) Webster knew they WEREN’T!

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2 Comments

  1. KAYTHEGARDENER April 7, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    F J Taylor, You’ve nailed the absurdities of the AFA in a single posting!!
    Thanks for your exposition of the development of Noah Webster’s career & thoughts, particularly the “ought” not “is”,,,

  2. Dale Warren April 7, 2015 at 10:55 pm

    I am often amused to see the extent the AFA will go to in using selected examples to “prove” their twisted conclusions.

    Thank you for your service in keeping them honest!

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