Fredom fom your religion?

– June 1, 2018

Mon, May 14, 2018 at 8:34 PM,   (name withheld) wrote:

You all went to great lengths to not address my most basic concern that your organization is promoting the self deceleration of schizophrenia among healthy people, schizophrenia being the only actual “freedom” from an individuals religion, their beliefs and practices. Your organization is not only promoting the false deceleration of “no-religion” by otherwise healthy if unaware individuals it is also actively pushing legislative and dictatorial policy changes to officially establish a nation wide schizophrenic state, or more accurately to establish a state like the USSR with its state religion Gosateizm. Which was and is not a freedom from religion but is only the assertion of that religion over all others.

If you want to free Americans from the official religion of our nation, you can first begin by pushing legislative repeal of the address of Jesus from Nazerine and his title of our Lord, as it is expressly writ in the signing of the Constitution. That is repeal the signing of the constitution if you would like to remove Jesus as the Lord of the US, officially.
Thanks
(name withheld)

Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell

On May 31, 2018, at 6:05 PM, Mike MFO <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear (name withheld),

It’s hard to take you seriously, therefore it’s difficult to not only know how to respond but also to discern whether
there’s any point in responding to your message.

Your premise – or perhaps your “most basic concern” – is foolish. Any reasonably rational person can grasp the
idea that there is a difference between having a religion, in the commonly understood sense of the word, or a
religious perspective, and having a belief system that is not a religion or a “religious” one.

Your apparent willingness to believe that those who don’t have a religion are schizophrenic smacks of the kind
of totalitarian, self-deluded arrogance one expects from a cult member. Unfortunately, we hear of lot of such
nonsense from your co-religionists, too often laced with antisemitic rants and crazed political jargon.

But to be clear, we are not “promoting” any “false declaration” of “no religion,” we are insisting that the constitutional
guarantee of freedom of religion does not limit one’s freedom to simply a choice of one of the established religions.
We are, to again be clear, not “pushing legislative and dictatorial policy changes” of any kind. We are quite happy
with the U.S. Constitution as it exists and happy to defend it against those, like yourself, who pretend that there is
an “official religion of our nation.”

There is not.

Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 6:29 PM,  (name withheld) wrote:

The institutions of the United States presuppose divinity, a supreme being. And the founders were not shy to naming him either. The United States government was founded as and has not officially ceased being a Christian one. Jesus’ lordship of our nation is spelled out in the Constitution.

The very freedom of religion you so boldy say you’re defending is a biblical principle taught in both the old and new testaments: Lev. 19:34 & 1Cor. 5:12
I never said people shouldn’t be free to worship as they will. But there is no freedom from ones own religion, short of an inability. If they choose to reject all other religions to have a unique one, that’s fine, it is still a religion non-the-less.
So to reiterate: the USA is under the Lordship of Jesus, that’s our countries official religion according to the Constitution. Despite laws that have been passed to undermine that fact, or to establish something new in its place. And there is still no freedom from your religion except out right schizophrenia.
Not only is his Lordship spelled out in the signing of the Constitution, the only part that cannot be repealled, but each of the fifty individual states make similar professions in their state Constitutions, perhaps you should try reading that which you claim to be upholding.
(name withheld)
Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell
On Jun 1, 2018, at 1:53 AM, Mike MFO <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear (name withheld),

Where is Jesus’ lordship spelled out in the Constitution? I must have missed that.

Some of our Founders were Deists, some were atheists, how does that make it a Christian country?

Your definition of religion is used by you to suit your personal purposes. I don’t subscribe.

You are incorrect about everything, as near as I can tell, but your apparent obsession with mental
illness is intriguing.

Response from MRFF Supporter

On Jun 1, 2018, at 5:10 PM, (name withheld) wrote:

If you are going to send hate mail, it would be good if you knew how to write good, rudimentary English.  Perhaps another year of school would be helpful.

Peace,
(name withheld)

 

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 12:00 PM, (name and e mail withheld)wrote:

Where is Jesus’ lordship spelled out in the Constitution? I must have missed that.
Its in the signing, the part where it was signed by the founders. Easy enough to search the text of the constitution for “our Lord”.

Some of our Founders were Deists, some were atheists, how does that make it a Christian country?

I challenge you to name a single atheist “founder”, and how is anyone a “Christian”? 1. Jesus Lordship 2. Biblical adherence 3. Love as he commanded.
Thomas Jefferson the most outspoken nonconformist of the founders, was adamantly reverent to all things Biblical, even penned the Deceleration of Independence a more stoutly Christian document than the Constitution. All of the founding documents speak to our Christian founding. The Mayflower Compact, the Deceleration of Independence, to his Lordship as spelled out in the Constitution. Rip out the Christian foundation of our nation and the whole thing collapses. Attempts to remove Christianity from our nations governmental bodies is sedition.

Your definition of religion is used by you to suit your personal purposes. I don’t subscribe.

Your definition, you haven’t provided, mine is from the Oxford Dictionary and has been the base definition for more than 300 years.
Religion: a set of beliefs and practices.

You are incorrect about everything, as near as I can tell, but your apparent obsession with mental

illness is intriguing.

Its not an obsession, its a statement of fact. Irreligious is a synonym of schizophrenic.
Schizophrenia: the inability to maintain beliefs and or practices.
Irreligious: the inability to maintain beliefs and or practices.
On what part am I wrong at all? I would love to have you show me an error in my logic or some kind of evidence to show I’m wrong, please.
Thanks.
(name withheld)
Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell
On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:44 PM, Mike MFO <[email protected]> wrote:


Try these on for size.

1. George Washington. The father of our country was nominally an Anglican but seemed more at home with Deism. The language of the Deists sounds odd to today’s ears because it’s a theological system of thought that has fallen out of favor. Deists believed in God but didn’t necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god of first cause. He set things in motion and then stepped back.
Washington often employed Deistic terms. His god was a “supreme architect” of the universe. Washington saw religion as necessary for good moral behavior but didn’t necessarily accept all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against communion and would usually leave services before it was offered.
Washington was widely tolerant of other beliefs. He is the author of one of the great classics of religious liberty – the letter to Touro Synagogue (1790). In this letter, Washington assured America’s Jews that they would enjoy complete religious liberty in America; not mere toleration in an officially “Christian” nation. He outlines a vision of a multi-faith society where all are free.
“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” wrote Washington. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Stories of Washington’s deep religiosity, such as tales of him praying in the snow at Valley Forge, can be ignored. They are pious legends invented after his death.
2. John Adams. The man who followed Washington in office was a Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.
In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with a man named Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The two argued over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus’ divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.
Adams was not impressed. In his diary he wrote, “Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, “[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….”
3. Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost impossible to define Jefferson’s subtle religious views in a few words. As he once put it, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” But one thing is clear: His skepticism of traditional Christianity is well established. Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.
Jefferson once famously observed to Adams, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher. In one of his most unusual acts, Jefferson edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found “sublime.” This “Jefferson Bible” is a remarkable document – and it would ensure his political defeat today. (Imagine the TV commercials the Religious Right would run: Thomas Jefferson hates Jesus! He mutilates Bibles!)
Jefferson was confident that a coolly rational form of religion would take root in the fertile intellectual soil of America. He once predicted that just about everyone would become Unitarian. (Despite his many talents, the man was no prophet.)
Jefferson took political stands that would infuriate today’s Religious Right and ensure that they would work to defeat him. He refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, saying that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job. His assertion that the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state” still rankles the Religious Right today.
4. James Madison. Jefferson’s close ally would be similarly unelectable today. Madison is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the founders when it comes to religion. To this day, scholars still debate his religious views.
Nominally Anglican, Madison, some of his biographers believe, was really a Deist. He went through a period of enthusiasm for Christianity as a young man, but this seems to have faded. Unlike many of today’s politicians, who eagerly wear religion on their sleeves and brag about the ways their faith will guide their policy decisions, Madison was notoriously reluctant to talk publicly about his religious beliefs.
Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders, taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.
Madison, who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, also opposed government-issued prayer proclamations. He issued a few during the War of 1812 at the insistence of Congress but later concluded that his actions had been unconstitutional. As president, he vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter. In both cases, he cited the First Amendment.
One can hear the commercials now: “James Madison is an anti-religious fanatic. He even opposes prayer proclamations during time of war.”
5. Thomas Paine. Paine never held elective office, but he played an important role as a pamphleteer whose stirring words helped rally Americans to independence. Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booster on Dec. 23, 1776. “Common Sense” was similarly popular with the people. These seminal documents were crucial to winning over the public to the side of independence.
So Paine’s a hero, right? He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists. In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. He rejected prophecies and miracles and called on readers to embrace reason. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament “wicked” and the entire Bible “the pretended word of God.”
What can we learn from this? Americans have the right to reject candidates for any reason, including their religious beliefs. But they ought to think twice before tossing someone aside just because he or she is skeptical of orthodox Christianity. After all, that description includes some of our nation’s greatest leaders.
Mike Farrell

 

 

 

 

 

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