Good stuff.
A bedrock commitment to religious liberty: just one more reason to admire Washington.
Article on the exhibit:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/23/after-decade-in-storage-washington-letter-on-religious-freedom-will-go-public/
The text of the letter:
http://www.tourosynagogue.org/index.php/history-learning/tsf-intro-menu/slom-scholarship/86-washington-letter
Very cool. Thanks for sharing that.
Oh wow, just wow. What a fantastic letter. I’m going to have to copy and keep that.
Did “demean” have a different meaning back then?
You might also be interested in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. The letter is, I believe, the first time anyone talked about “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
In the sense of “conduct themselves with the demeanor…”
It’s more commonly found as “demeanor” these days. It’s similar to “behave,” but I’ve always understood it to describe attitude as well as action.
That said, the letter has to have been altered in transcription: Washington couldn’t possibly have said anything that socialistic. And since Muslims are also children of Abraham, that has to have been a later corruption.I suppose after Andrew Schlafly gets done with the Bible he’s going to have to restore the writings of the Founding Fathers to their original, conservative, free-market context.
Now if they’ll only display Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty with Tripoli.
Yes, that’s good, although I understand there is some slight controversy about that provision: Treaty of Tripoli - Wikipedia