"Including none at all" 16 Jan 2010 Just when I start to get cynical about Obama’s agenda, he proclaims this: Long before our Nation’s independence, weary settlers sought refuge on our shores to escape religious persecution on other continents. Recognizing their strife and toil, it was the genius of America’s forefathers to protect our freedom of religion, including the freedom to practice none at all. And then he proclaims this “a critical foundation for [America’s] liberty”. God bless him. Or is it a cynical move to appeal to the light and dark skinned black community? Politics Race and politics Religion
Accommodationism Accommodating science: Evolution and change 2 Mar 20146 May 2014 Robert J. Berry is a geneticist at University College London. He is also an evangelical Christian and has written a number of works on the compatibility of religion (his kind, anyway) and evolution (Berry 1975). He was moved to write to the science journal Nature, in which he took to… Read More
Evolution A blast from my past is reasonable – shock! 14 Aug 2008 As I sit here, dying slowly and loudly from a dose of gastro and probably ‘flu (Australian male: we don’t do sick well), trying to distract myself from the efforts of my lower intestines to escape to Jamaica, I came across a name I recall all too well from my… Read More
Philosophy Christian capitalism and socialism 13 Aug 201113 Aug 2011 Greg Paul, whose work on dinosaurs I find most interesting, has a blog entry on the Washington Post site on another kind of dinosaur – Christian socialists. He notes that the current American Christian obsession with capitalism is quite contrary to the early church and possibly Jesus’ own social philosophy, but more… Read More
Long before our Nation’s independence, weary settlers sought refuge on our shores to escape religious persecution on other continents. There may have been some early settlers who fled religious persecution but not many. That’s a great myth. One set of my ancestors were Dutch settlers in the Hudson valley. They were members of the Dutch Reform Church – the same church they belonged to in the Netherlands. Another set were “Puritans” who settled in Connecticut. They belonged to the same Protestant churches that they left in England and the relatives they left behind suffered no obvious persecution – indeed, they took over the government during the civil war! As far as I can tell, my “Puritan” ancestors were more interested in setting up their own system of religious persecution in the new world than in fleeing persecution in England. Settlers in other parts of the 13 colonies included large numbers of Catholics from England and Protestants from Germany and I don’t think it’s fair to claim that they were motivated to emigrate because of religious persecution.
Could you explain your last question? How is it a “cynical move to appeal to the light and dark skinned black community”?