"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Religious fanatics, we're fighting them in Iraq, are these guys next?

--------------------------------------------------------
"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"
Across the United States, religious activists are organizing to establish an American theocracy. A frightening look inside the growing right-wing movement.

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from senior writer Michelle Goldberg's new book, "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism."
By Michelle Goldberg

May 12, 2006 | A teenage modern dance troupe dressed all in black took their places on the stage of the First Baptist Church of Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Two dancers, donning black overcoats, crossed their arms menacingly. As a Christian pop ballad swelled on the speakers, a boy wearing judicial robes walked out. Holding a Ten Commandments tablet that seemed to be made of cardboard, he was playing former Alabama Supreme Court justice Roy Moore. The trench-coated thugs approached him, miming a violent rebuke and forcing him to the other end of the stage, sans Commandments.

There, a cluster of dancers impersonating liberal activists waved signs with slogans like "No Moore!" and "Keep God Out!! No God in Court." The boy Moore danced a harangue, first lurching toward his tormentors and then cringing back in outrage before breaking through their line to lunge for his monument. But the dancers in trench coats -- agents of atheism -- got hold of it first and took it away, leaving him abject on the floor. As the song's uplifting chorus played -- "After you've done all you can, you just stand" -- a dancer in a white robe, playing either an angel or God himself, came forward and helped the Moore character to his feet.

The performance ended to enthusiastic applause from a crowd that included many Alabama judges and politicians, as well as Roy Moore himself, a gaunt man with a courtly manner and the wrath of Leviticus in his eyes. Moore has become a hero to those determined to remake the United States into an explicitly Christian nation. That reconstructionist dream lies at the red-hot center of our current culture wars, investing the symbolic fight over the Ten Commandments -- a fight whose outcome seems irrelevant to most peoples' lives -- with an apocalyptic urgency.

On November 13, 2003, Moore was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court after he defied a judge's order to remove the 2.6-ton Ten Commandments monument he'd installed in the Montgomery judicial building. On the coasts, he seemed a ridiculous figure, the latest in a line of grotesque Southern anachronisms. After all, Moore is a man who, in a 2002 court decision awarding custody of three children to their allegedly abusive father over their lesbian mother, called homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated," and argued, "The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle." He's a man who writes rhyming poetry decrying the teaching of evolution and who fought against the Alabama ballot measure to remove segregationist language from the state constitution.

To the growing Christian nationalist movement, though, Roy Moore is a martyr, cut down by secular tyranny for daring to assert God's truth.

It's a role he seems to love. The battle that cost Moore his job wasn't his first Ten Commandments fight. In 1995, the ACLU sued Moore, then a county circuit judge, for hanging a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom and leading juries in prayer. As Matt Labash recalled in an adulatory Weekly Standard article, "The conflict's natural drama was compounded when the governor, Fob James, announced that he would deploy the National Guard, state troopers, and the Alabama and Auburn football teams to keep Moore's tablets on the wall."

That case reached an ambiguous conclusion in 1998, when the state supreme court threw out the lawsuit on technical grounds. By then, Moore had become a star of the right. Televangelist D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries raised more than $100,000 for his legal defense fund, and Moore spoke at a series of rallies that drew thousands. His right-wing fame helped catapult him to victory in the 2000 race for chief justice of the state supreme court.

Moore installed his massive Ten Commandments monument on August 1, 2001, and from the beginning, he and his allies used it to stir up the Christian nationalist faithful. He gave videographers from Coral Ridge Ministries exclusive access to the courthouse on the night the monument was mounted, and on October 14, D. James Kennedy started hawking a $19 video about Moore's brave, covert installation on his television show.

As the controversy over the statue ignited, Moore's fame grew. At rallies across the country, he summoned the faithful to an ideal that sounded very much like theocracy. "For forty years we have wandered like the children of Israel," he told a crowd of three thousand supporters in Tennessee. "In homes and schools across our land, it's time for Christians to take a stand. This is not a nation established on the principles of Buddha or Hinduism. Our faith is not Islam. What we follow is not the Koran but the Bible.This is a Christian nation."

By the time he was removed as chief justice, Moore had sparked a movement, and his monument was an icon. In the days before officials came to cart the Commandments away, hundreds flocked to Montgomery to rally on the courtroom steps. Some slept there and imagined themselves the nucleus of a new civil rights movement.

Thomas Bowman, a bearded Christian folk singer from Kentucky who wears a knit Rasta hat, wrote an anthem called "Montgomery Fire" celebrating the demonstrations: "We had love in our hearts that no man could ever remove / but with the whole world we watched as they hauled the Commandments away." When I met him a year later at First Baptist, he referred to the protesters, romantically, as the "ragamuffin warriors" fighting for God against the atheist state. During the controversy, he said, he'd felt the Lord's call, and driven six and a half hours from Louisville. In Montgomery, he met others like him, who'd felt compelled to take a stand against secularism.

"The opposing side, the anti-God side, the do-whatever-you-want side, the judicial side, just kept pushing and pushing and pushing for the last forty years," Bowman said. "They keep moving that line back." Finally, he said, God called on Christians to defend themselves.

After the Commandments were removed, a group of retired military men from Texas who called themselves American Veterans in Domestic Defense spent months taking the monument -- now affectionately called "Roy’s Rock" -- on tour all over the country, holding more than 150 viewings and rallies in churches, at state capitols, even in Wal-Mart parking lots. Moore also found powerful supporters in statehouses and in Congress who proposed laws to radically restrict the power of federal courts to enforce the separation of church and state. In solidarity, another Alabama judge, Ashley McKathan, had the Ten Commandments embroidered onto his robe. Christian homeschool catalogues offered copies of a video titled "Roy Moore’s Message to America." When Moore suggested he might run for Alabama governor, state polls showed him with a double-digit lead.

Next page: The connection between Fascism and Christian Nationalism
(CONTINUED)
http://tinyurl.com/ld9mp

[Smiling Assassin27]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

Religious fanatics, we're fighting them in Iraq, are these guys next?

--------------------------------------------------------
"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"
Across the United States, religious activists are organizing to establish an American theocracy. A frightening look inside the growing right-wing movement.

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from senior writer Michelle Goldberg's new book, "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism."
By Michelle Goldberg

May 12, 2006 | A teenage modern dance troupe dressed all in black took their places on the stage of the First Baptist Church of Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Two dancers, donning black overcoats, crossed their arms menacingly. As a Christian pop ballad swelled on the speakers, a boy wearing judicial robes walked out. Holding a Ten Commandments tablet that seemed to be made of cardboard, he was playing former Alabama Supreme Court justice Roy Moore. The trench-coated thugs approached him, miming a violent rebuke and forcing him to the other end of the stage, sans Commandments.

There, a cluster of dancers impersonating liberal activists waved signs with slogans like "No Moore!" and "Keep God Out!! No God in Court." The boy Moore danced a harangue, first lurching toward his tormentors and then cringing back in outrage before breaking through their line to lunge for his monument. But the dancers in trench coats -- agents of atheism -- got hold of it first and took it away, leaving him abject on the floor. As the song's uplifting chorus played -- "After you've done all you can, you just stand" -- a dancer in a white robe, playing either an angel or God himself, came forward and helped the Moore character to his feet.

The performance ended to enthusiastic applause from a crowd that included many Alabama judges and politicians, as well as Roy Moore himself, a gaunt man with a courtly manner and the wrath of Leviticus in his eyes. Moore has become a hero to those determined to remake the United States into an explicitly Christian nation. That reconstructionist dream lies at the red-hot center of our current culture wars, investing the symbolic fight over the Ten Commandments -- a fight whose outcome seems irrelevant to most peoples' lives -- with an apocalyptic urgency.

On November 13, 2003, Moore was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court after he defied a judge's order to remove the 2.6-ton Ten Commandments monument he'd installed in the Montgomery judicial building. On the coasts, he seemed a ridiculous figure, the latest in a line of grotesque Southern anachronisms. After all, Moore is a man who, in a 2002 court decision awarding custody of three children to their allegedly abusive father over their lesbian mother, called homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated," and argued, "The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle." He's a man who writes rhyming poetry decrying the teaching of evolution and who fought against the Alabama ballot measure to remove segregationist language from the state constitution.

To the growing Christian nationalist movement, though, Roy Moore is a martyr, cut down by secular tyranny for daring to assert God's truth.

It's a role he seems to love. The battle that cost Moore his job wasn't his first Ten Commandments fight. In 1995, the ACLU sued Moore, then a county circuit judge, for hanging a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom and leading juries in prayer. As Matt Labash recalled in an adulatory Weekly Standard article, "The conflict's natural drama was compounded when the governor, Fob James, announced that he would deploy the National Guard, state troopers, and the Alabama and Auburn football teams to keep Moore's tablets on the wall."

That case reached an ambiguous conclusion in 1998, when the state supreme court threw out the lawsuit on technical grounds. By then, Moore had become a star of the right. Televangelist D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries raised more than $100,000 for his legal defense fund, and Moore spoke at a series of rallies that drew thousands. His right-wing fame helped catapult him to victory in the 2000 race for chief justice of the state supreme court.

Moore installed his massive Ten Commandments monument on August 1, 2001, and from the beginning, he and his allies used it to stir up the Christian nationalist faithful. He gave videographers from Coral Ridge Ministries exclusive access to the courthouse on the night the monument was mounted, and on October 14, D. James Kennedy started hawking a $19 video about Moore's brave, covert installation on his television show.

As the controversy over the statue ignited, Moore's fame grew. At rallies across the country, he summoned the faithful to an ideal that sounded very much like theocracy. "For forty years we have wandered like the children of Israel," he told a crowd of three thousand supporters in Tennessee. "In homes and schools across our land, it's time for Christians to take a stand. This is not a nation established on the principles of Buddha or Hinduism. Our faith is not Islam. What we follow is not the Koran but the Bible.This is a Christian nation."

By the time he was removed as chief justice, Moore had sparked a movement, and his monument was an icon. In the days before officials came to cart the Commandments away, hundreds flocked to Montgomery to rally on the courtroom steps. Some slept there and imagined themselves the nucleus of a new civil rights movement.

Thomas Bowman, a bearded Christian folk singer from Kentucky who wears a knit Rasta hat, wrote an anthem called "Montgomery Fire" celebrating the demonstrations: "We had love in our hearts that no man could ever remove / but with the whole world we watched as they hauled the Commandments away." When I met him a year later at First Baptist, he referred to the protesters, romantically, as the "ragamuffin warriors" fighting for God against the atheist state. During the controversy, he said, he'd felt the Lord's call, and driven six and a half hours from Louisville. In Montgomery, he met others like him, who'd felt compelled to take a stand against secularism.

"The opposing side, the anti-God side, the do-whatever-you-want side, the judicial side, just kept pushing and pushing and pushing for the last forty years," Bowman said. "They keep moving that line back." Finally, he said, God called on Christians to defend themselves.

After the Commandments were removed, a group of retired military men from Texas who called themselves American Veterans in Domestic Defense spent months taking the monument -- now affectionately called "Roy’s Rock" -- on tour all over the country, holding more than 150 viewings and rallies in churches, at state capitols, even in Wal-Mart parking lots. Moore also found powerful supporters in statehouses and in Congress who proposed laws to radically restrict the power of federal courts to enforce the separation of church and state. In solidarity, another Alabama judge, Ashley McKathan, had the Ten Commandments embroidered onto his robe. Christian homeschool catalogues offered copies of a video titled "Roy Moore’s Message to America." When Moore suggested he might run for Alabama governor, state polls showed him with a double-digit lead.

Next page: The connection between Fascism and Christian Nationalism
(CONTINUED)
http://tinyurl.com/ld9mp

Yeah, i guess everyone's entitled freedom of expression except the ones that believe in God...Depicting the deliberate killing of anti-abortion activists in a comic is fine but this isnt? Those who scream for tolerance ought to live by the same standard they demand of others, IMO.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

Yeah, i guess everyone's entitled freedom of expression except the ones that believe in God...Depicting the deliberate killing of anti-abortion activists in a comic is fine but this isnt? Those who scream for tolerance ought to live by the same standard they demand of others, IMO.

.. i forgot to warn BB to aim low ........ it isnt that Christians cant speak , they are free to , just dot expect me to speak the same language , dont use tax payers money to promote religion on goverment property ......... not that hardto figure out is it ?
just like that play and their message , they are free to do it , make it a movie , mel Gibson can direct it ........... Just dont force the rest of us to see it ......

[alkemical]

I think we should teach Aliester Crowley in schools.

I think it'd be just what america needs IMO.

[Smiling Assassin27]

why? it's ok to use government money for population control under the guise of 'medical care' but it's not OK to use it to uphold a moral code? they're the same thing only one is deceptive in its practice.

there's a reason the Founding Fathers invoked God in their Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and even in the first ordinance they passed as a Congress. There's a reason why they based the Tri-partheid government on the Trinity and the government on the Bible. It's because they believed that religion HAD to be part of a republic that guaranteed freedom. now, people claim that this moral code is 'imposing' on others. if you don't like looking at the 10 Commandments, then look away. This nation has never been atheist, so stop trying to whitewash history and create a Godless state out of the god-fearing men who established it. i await your uninformed ridicule.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

why? it's ok to use government money for population control under the guise of 'medical care' but it's not OK to use it to uphold a moral code? they're the same thing only one is deceptive in its practice.

no it isnt ? how in the hell didyou come up with that ? Healthcare we need , Religion is an option ...........

there's a reason the Founding Fathers invoked God in their Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and even in the first ordinance they passed as a Congress. There's a reason why they based the Tri-partheid government on the Trinity and the government on the Bible. It's because they believed that religion HAD to be part of a republic that guaranteed freedom. now, people claim that this moral code is 'imposing' on others. if you don't like looking at the 10 Commandments, then look away. This nation has never been atheist, so stop trying to whitewash history and create a Godless state out of the god-fearing men who established it. i await your uninformed ridicule.

on the same hand if you want the 10 commandments ( according to you is off the mark)then why not carry a little plaque with them on it ? you can see them when ever you want ..........and no god did not have to be part of Republic , the freedom to persue religion was part of the republic ........ you get God mixed up with Religion alot ........

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

why? it's ok to use government money for population control under the guise of 'medical care' but it's not OK to use it to uphold a moral code? they're the same thing only one is deceptive in its practice.

there's a reason the Founding Fathers invoked God in their Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and even in the first ordinance they passed as a Congress. There's a reason why they based the Tri-partheid government on the Trinity and the government on the Bible. It's because they believed that religion HAD to be part of a republic that guaranteed freedom. now, people claim that this moral code is 'imposing' on others. if you don't like looking at the 10 Commandments, then look away. This nation has never been atheist, so stop trying to whitewash history and create a Godless state out of the god-fearing men who established it. i await your uninformed ridicule.

So many wrongs things here but suffice to say, you and the religious right do NOT have the right to impose your religion on me or anyone else (neither does any other religion). Our founders made it absolutely clear.

But you can humor me and tell me how many people attend church in this country to show why this country is a nation of God..

[Smiling Assassin27]

Originally Posted by §Pide®

no it isnt ? how in the hell didyou come up with that ? Healthcare we need , Religion is an option ...........


on the same hand if you want the 10 commandments ( according to you is off the mark)then why not carry a little plaque with them on it ? you can see them when ever you want ..........and no god did not have to be part of Republic , the freedom to persue religion was part of the republic ........ you get God mixed up with Religion alot ........

allowing abortion is a moral stance. when the state funds them, it takes a moral stance. no different than the state posting the 10 Commandments, except one leads to loss of life and one does not.

have you ever read the Northwest Ordinance, spider? i'd recommend it--it's the first Ordinance passed by the first Congress which outlined principles for expansion of the nation. It mandated that, since religion was integral to having a moral people, and moral people were the cornerstone of a Republic, that schools must be (not should be) set up to provide the moral basis for expansion--morality based on the 10 commandments. Not my words, the words of the First Congress. See, if you do your homework, you see the first Legislative bodies writing things like:

Whereas, the people of these United States, from their earliest history to the present time, have been led by the hand of a kind Providence and are indebted for the countless blessings of the past and present, and dependent for continued prosperity in the future upon Almighty God; and whereas the great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it eminently becomes the representatives of a people so highly favored to acknowledge in the most public manner their reverence for God: therefore, Resolved, That the daily sessions of this body be opened with prayer and that the ministers of the Gospel in this city are hereby requested to attend and alternately perform this solemn duty.

During the Revolutionary War, Congress was passing bills that called upon God to help them win the war and established a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1777 that said:

FORASMUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God;...It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise; That with one Heart and one Voice the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favour, and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD, through the Merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand, and to prosper the Means of Religion for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom which consisteth “in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.”

it's been this way since the beginning.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

allowing abortion is a moral stance. when the state funds them, it takes a moral stance. no different than the state posting the 10 Commandments, except one leads to loss of life and one does not.

it is also a fiscal stance , if I wasnt in the position I was , I couldnt afford my triplets , some guy dirt poor would have to terminate the pregnancy .............. 1 baby cost alot , 3 tripples the cost , not to mention if there is a health problem ..............

have you ever read the Northwest Ordinance, spider? i'd recommend it--it's the first Ordinance passed by the first Congress which outlined principles for expansion of the nation. It mandated that, since religion was integral to having a moral people, and moral people were the cornerstone of a Republic, that schools must be (not should be) set up to provide the moral basis for expansion--morality based on the 10 commandments. Not my words, the words of the First Congress. See, if you do your homework, you see the first Legislative bodies writing things like:



During the Revolutionary War, Congress was passing bills that called upon God to help them win the war and established a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1777 that said:

FORASMUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God;...It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise; That with one Heart and one Voice the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favour, and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD, through the Merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand, and to prosper the Means of Religion for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom which consisteth “in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.”

it's been this way since the beginning.

yeah the indians thought we was pretty moral , no question about it ...... Small pox into the blankets , running Buffalo over a cliff to cut their food supply , slaughtering entire tribes ......same reoccuring theme with Religion ........ Do as we say not as we do

[alkemical]

Founding fathers were Diests, not christians.

[DBruleU]

Originally Posted by amesj523

Founding fathers were Diests, not christians.

Yeah, we can definitely tell by what was posted above, they were definitely not Christians.

[DBruleU]

Originally Posted by §Pide®

it is also a fiscal stance , if I wasnt in the position I was , I couldnt afford my triplets , some guy dirt poor would have to terminate the pregnancy .............. 1 baby cost alot , 3 tripples the cost , not to mention if there is a health problem ..............


yeah the indians thought we was pretty moral , no question about it ...... Small pox into the blankets , running Buffalo over a cliff to cut their food supply , slaughtering entire tribes ......same reoccuring theme with Religion ........ Do as we say not as we do

What does any of that have to do with how the Indians viewed us?

It was the point that God was a huge part of our founding of this country. And Assassins post leaves little room for debate.

Read any of our founding fathers original writings, and you will see they were most definitely Christians, and their God was Jesus Christ.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by DBruleU

What does any of that have to do with how the Indians viewed us?

It was the point that God was a huge part of our founding of this country. And Assassins post leaves little room for debate.

Read any of our founding fathers original writings, and you will see they were most definitely Christians, and their God was Jesus Christ.

so you dont see the do as we do not as we say angle ........ Ok i thought it was pretty obvious ........ if this was the case , then how come under god was added to the plegde of aliegence in the 50's ........... our founding fathers were dietist .........

[alkemical]

You fundies make me laugh.

The founding fathers were diests - George Washington, Jefferson - etc - They borrowed the Penna Charter to setup freedom of religion. They realized (being diests) that all religions had a ray of light sent from god.

[defenseman]

I'm convinced that this problem started because some organizations and non-christian believing people have decided over the years to not only remove some of the crosses across the country (that I might add have been in place for hundreds of years), but to take it a step further and claim they should not have to look at a nativity display during the holiday season. I quite honestly agree with many of this group though that this group "apparently a minority" wants christmas, easter, you name it wiped out....this is the repurcussions of the goals of some non-christian people and the organizations that have helped them carve up america. A balance needs to be struck, thusly, a balance it is...........honestly, I saw this one coming 10 or 15 years ago based on some of the nut cases in califorinia, city of LA, you name it. All in the name of special interests as far as I'm concerned..dman

[defenseman]

the founding fathers though found a way to include god in alot of their workings. They don't have to be priests or anything else. They wanted it in there, so they put it in....dman

[Spider]

it isnt we want x mas , easter , wipedout , we celebrate it like everyone else , most of us understand what Christmas is and what it means to christianity , but it is so comercialized now , that they have lost their meaning , so now we have Santa and the easter bunny , tell me what do they have to do with Christ ? nothing , so now they are secular holidays , and if you buy x mas presents youare part of the transformation ........ so while it is easy to kick back and blame people like me for this , it ismuch harder to do soul searching and see people that celebrate Christmas i the same fashion I do are a larger part of the problem ........ PEOPLE NEED TO TAKE RESPONCIBILTY FOR THEIR ACTIONS ...........

[BroncoInferno]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

why? it's ok to use government money for population control under the guise of 'medical care' but it's not OK to use it to uphold a moral code? they're the same thing only one is deceptive in its practice.

If you are talking about abortion, I agree, I am not in favor of the state paying for them for the same reason I am against the state endorsing and showing favor to a particular religion.

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

there's a reason the Founding Fathers invoked God in their Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and even in the first ordinance they passed as a Congress. There's a reason why they based the Tri-partheid government on the Trinity and the government on the Bible. It's because they believed that religion HAD to be part of a republic that guaranteed freedom. now, people claim that this moral code is 'imposing' on others. if you don't like looking at the 10 Commandments, then look away. This nation has never been atheist, so stop trying to whitewash history and create a Godless state out of the god-fearing men who established it. i await your uninformed ridicule.

Wow, so much BS here, it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, the 10 Commandments are not the basis for our laws. The only two that are actually against our national laws are stealing and murder. I can commit adultry all I want; I can covet my neighbor's wife and ass till the cows come home; I take take the Lord's name in vain as a hobby, etc all without suffering any consequences within our law. And our founding fathers were not all Christians, they were an interesting mix of deists, atheists, agnostics AND Christians working together. Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Constitution, was a deist, a product of the Enlightenment, often spoke with contempt regarding religion, and you want to tell me he wanted religion to play a part in our laws? Ever hear of the wall between church and state? Thomas Jefferson invented that phrase! And you want us to believe that this same man and the others like him wanted to form a Christian nation? There is some revisionist history being attempted here, but it isn't coming from the secularists.

[defenseman]

The balance is struck. These supposed "right wing" groups of fanatical religious zealots were created not by me, but by the fanatical "left wing" groups who preach their collective mantras. A balance was necessary, herego, it has been struck in a quite natural way indeed. Bottom line: any excessive beliefs or groups will eventually breed the opposite , it can't help but too, based on the priniciple of equal balance alone....dman

[Spider]

Originally Posted by defenseman

The balance is struck. These supposed "right wing" groups of fanatical religious zealots were created not by me, but by the fanatical "left wing" groups who preach their collective mantras. A balance was necessary, herego, it has been struck in a quite natural way indeed. Bottom line: any excessive beliefs or groups will eventually breed the opposite , it can't help but too, based on the priniciple of equal balance alone....dman

there is no balance not as long as Christmas is comercialized ....... Christmas as christians see it has nothing to do with the way Christmas is celebrated ...... a balance wouldbe to make Christmas to be what Chirstians lore has it to be , andcreate another Holiday , um like Spiders day andwe can celebrate it now as we do Christmas

[Spider]

but you dont invite the fox into the hen house , then blame the dead chickens on the fox ......

[defenseman]

Christmas, is christmas. I just don't see your point..here let me take my rose colored glasses off .......that's better ...ok give it a shot....dman

[Spider]

Originally Posted by defenseman

Christmas, is christmas. I just don't see your point..here let me take my rose colored glasses off .......that's better ...ok give it a shot....dman

secularism , when Xmas became commericialized with Santa , christmas sales, Rudolph , Frosty the snowman , has nothing to do with the connection of the birth of christ , and those christians that took part in this are just as guilty of destroying christmas as those that want religion removed ..........
if you are not part of the solution , you are part of the problem .......it is just easier to say hey ,godless heathens are destroying Christmas , when in reality everyone is destroying it ..........Christmas is more to christians then setting up a navity sceen

[defenseman]

I see your point to a point. On the same token, the children are sort of "robbed" of what should be a very wonderful time in each of their lives. Christmas time. I don't know, I'm going to have to knaw on this one for a while......I can't see taking this away from our kids....I'll agree , it is very commercialized and I don't care too much for that either...dman

[Spider]

Originally Posted by defenseman

I see your point to a point. On the same token, the children are sort of "robbed" of what should be a very wonderful time in each of their lives. Christmas time. I don't know, I'm going to have to knaw on this one for a while......I can't see taking this away from our kids....I'll agree , it is very commercialized and I don't care too much for that either...dman

I agree not talking about taking it away , just seperating ........ Let Christians have Christmas , celebrate it any way they want , but then have another holiday with Santa , Rudolph , frosty the snow man .......... the only reason this aint done is both sides need this issue to rally suipport for their cause