The liberal South DaCola just doesn't get it.
What kind of a low have we sunk to where a pastor is condemned for speaking plainly about what is true and what is moral. Our society used to commend pastors for that, and used to appreciate that pastors helped keep our society healthy and safe.
Now such pastoral dedication is not only rare, but often met with scorn.
I noted a couple of days ago that South DaCola was awful touchy about the abortion issue when Pastor Steve Hickey at Voices Carry blogged on Leslie Stusiak, the new Regional Field Director for the South Dakota Campaign for UnHealthy Families.
South DaCola was in a tiff because Hickey provided some information about this young woman, and I pointed out that the information provided was not super-secret or information of an intimate or embarrassing nature; pretty much what you could Google up with a few seconds effort. And wanting to know something about a leader in a major public policy group in South Dakota is completely legitimate and natural.
Apparently my appeals to reason fell on deaf ears, because South DaCola took another swipe at Pastor Hickey today, among other things saying Hickey is an "ideologue."
South DaCola says an ideologue is "someone who theorizes (especially in science or art)." That is one definition, according to WordNet. But the Merriam-Webster dictionary is a little more precise:
1 : an impractical idealist : theorist
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology
I think there's a little ideologue in any of us who have strong opinions about something. And I think for South DaCola to imply that Hickey is a textbook ideologue and to imply that he is not one is, to use a word I used on Friday, something like hypocrisy.
But what is more important than this petty hypocrisy is that South DaCola accuses Hickey of lying...when he himself is either broadcasting his ignorance or is lying.
Accuses l3wis at South DaCola:
Or his rewriting of American History claiming our forfathers were theocrats like himself, all the while forgetting that a democratic goverment was invented by non-Christians:
And he quotes Hickey as having said on Voices Carry, in response to comments about secularism:
4. You are fully ignorant and revisionist in your comments about the separation of church and state. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s even an impossibility as the govt. IS the people and the people ALL have “religious” worldviews - even atheists. The only question is whose religious world view and moral agenda will shape this nation, the moral agenda of our founding (decidedly Christian) or something other. Did they teach you in your high school government class that pastors don’t have first amendment rights?
l3wis then follows with this pronouncement:
Instead debating the facts, he changes or twists the facts. He believes abortion is murder and believes murder is a sin. Is lying?
Well, since the unborn child has human DNA, and that DNA is unique from the mother from the moment of conception, I think scientifically this makes the unborn child a distinct human being. If this is a distinct human being, to kill one who has done no wrong and provided no threat to anyone meets the definition of murder. So I don't see any lying going on from Pastor Steve here.
I also don't see any going on from Pastor Steve with regard to the separation of church and state and the Christian foundations of our nation.
While I understand that the average citizen could be misled by the large amount of propaganda that's been foisted on our society in an attempt to revise history, one should really be able to expect better from a blogger. Bloggers, after all, are passionate enough to put their opinions in writing. And they are usually conscientious enough to have done a little research on what they discuss.
Apparently that is not the case with l3wis' misunderstanding (or lying, if he knows better) of Americas Christian foundation and heritage.
Consider the following quotes which illustrate not only the Christian worldview of the founders, but their belief that morality and a Christian worldview is absolutely essential to a free and healthy society.
First, consider that almost every colonial charter issued for the New World contained references to Christianity and the advancement of the Gospel and the saving of souls as a reason for the foundation of the colony.
Next, consider these statements by the founders:
“Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore lay Christ at the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” – From Harvard's Rules and Precepts, Josiah Quincy, LL, D., History of Harvard University (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co., 1860), 515
Harvard’s original motto was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” or “Truth for Christ and the Church.” (Samuel Eliot Morison, “Harvard Seals and Arms,” The Harvard Graduats’ Magazine, September 1933, 8)
In the 1746 founding statement of Princeton, it says, “Cursed is all learning that is contrary to the Cross of Christ.” (Mark A. Beliles & Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History, Charlottesville: Providence Foundation, 1989,111)
“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.” - Gouverneur Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence
“Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, united their endeavours to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.” - Samuel Adams
“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.” - Benjamin Rush
"...the only foundation for...a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." - Benjamin Rush
“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most import and and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” - Benjamin Rush
"Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and that in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts they will be wise and happy." - Benjamin Rush
"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments." - Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration
"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine .... Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other." - James Wilson, signer of the Declaration
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." - The Declaration of Independence
"The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible." - Patrick Henry
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all of our civil constitutions and laws.… All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." - Noah Webster
"...man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker's will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature. This law of nature...dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original." - Sir William Blackstone, English jurist who profoundly influenced law not only in England but in colonial America and the early United States
"Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these." - Sir William Blackstone
“…how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly appealing to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible to danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered… And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?...I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel...We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages…I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…” - Benjamin Franklin, the least religious of the founders, which began the practice of opening congressional sessions with prayer which continues today.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” - President George Washington
“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” - John Adams
"[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
“Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” – Northwest Ordinance, July 13, 1787.
When the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville toured America some 40 or so years after the founding of the United States, he found that while the United States explicitly and by design did not have a state religion, Christianity nevertheless permeated and influenced every segment of society:
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.
Again de Tocqueville points out that Christianity has and does influence the nature of our government, not through official religions or theocracy or other such dangerous marriages of church and state, but simply through the faith of the citizens and the people who make up that government:
In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State.
de Tocqueville also noticed what many of the founders said: that freedom and the Christian worldview are so compatible and complimentary that the former is practically necessary to the maintenance of the latter.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.
So I think it is obvious that Pastor Hickey was not lying about the Christian heritage of our nation, or about the Christian worldview that gave birth to our nation.
Rather, for someone to deny this Christian heritage requires one of two things: ignorance or deception.
I don't know which is the case for l3wis at South DaCola, but it definitely isn't Pastor Steve who's lying.
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