Polycarp - can you explain more fully whence your understanding came?
My readings have led me to understand that, although GW did participate in his community church to some extent, he did so more because it was essentially required by the social norms of the time than because he was a believer. I’ve read extracts from his private writings, and they tended to bear out the idea that he was a Deist in his beliefs, although publicly Christian for appearances. This understanding was supported by some of his actions as well.
I will grant that my sources may be slanting the info a tad. However, I’m not sure that a “moderate-conservative Christian” group is exactly unbiased either. What everyone seems to agree on is that Washington was a very private man and never discussed or wrote about his religious beliefs, so nobody really knows for sure what he truly believed.
But I would be interested in reading something on this that was written from another perspective.
It might not have occured to them there would be a problem with the ten commandment. At the almost eveyone in the country was a least nominally Christian (I’d suppose the personal beliefs of newly arrived slaves was not considered too much) and the ten commandment would not amount to “legal ascendency of one sect over another”. But once you have citizens for whom the TC are not part of their relgious doctrine…how could it be anything else?
What they said, and signed their names to is “no establishment of religion”. Their personal beliefs are as politaiclly relavent as the their ownership of slaves. Do we want to go with- “They SAID all men are created equal, but they MEANT this is a slaveholding nation?”
If I may be permitted to throw in 2 more cents, since at least a couple of the commandments include specific instructions on how one should worship, I sincerely doubt that many of the FF, like Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin, would approve of the government endorsing them. The “major” commandments, like those regarding stealing and murder, are already covered by the law, and the rest are moral guidelines that are between the individual and their god and/or conscience.
I would imagine that the deists would have had issues with several of the commandments, especially the first three which have nothing to do with morality or legality, only God.
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:hyjack:
There seems to be a common idea among members of this board that the placement of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms is primarily meant to proclaim the virtues of the Judeo-Christian school of religious thought. IMHO I submit that the placement of the Ten Commandments (in Courtrooms) was merely meant to display one of the oldest examples of written LAW that was readily common and well known at the time. It is for this reason that I believe that its public display in courts of law DOES NOT violate inherently the SOCS.
:/hyjack:
Possibly some older representations of the Ten Commandments were intended only as representations of Law. While the U.S. Supreme Court building doesn’t actually have the words of the Ten Commandments carved in stone right over the Justices’ heads, as members of the Religious Right are wont to claim, there are several references to Moses handing down the law including among the assortment of allegorical figures (Hammurabi, Solon, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc.) who represent Law which decorate the building. However, I think it’s pretty clear that the current spate of attempts to tack the Ten Commandments up in assorted courtrooms, schoolrooms, statehouses, etc. are overwhelmingly motivated by a desire to have the state promote “Judeo-Christian values” (and mostly fundamentalist Protestant Christian values at that).
Also, note that the Lemon Test (the “standard of judicial review in cases involving the establishment clause of the First Amendment”) states that laws must 1) have a secular legislative purpose, 2) neither advance nor inhibit religion, and 3) must not foster excessive government entaglement with religion. Now, government display of the Ten Commandments might conceivably be held to have a secular purpose (i.e., to allegorically represent the majesty of Law in a courtroom), but I think having the state proclaim to its citizens how and when to worship which god both advances religion over non-religion and Judeo-Christian religions over non-Judeo-Christian ones, and also excessively entangles the government with religion. I believe the Supremes have also been pretty consistent in sharing this opinion.
I looked last night for the book that analyzed George Washington’s beliefs based on his personal correspondence. It’s either departed (a fair proportion of our books disappeared in one of our moves) or in storage some miles from home. Best answer I can give is that I do remember reading this, that it was in a book relative to public morality written by one of the people affiliated with Francis Schaeffer and his group. (I knew Mrs. Schaeffer’s sister several years ago – she belonged to the same church as we did.)
