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Why Americans Are So Awful to One Another

ImTheCaptain said:
I guess, the idea is that you religious beliefs should be separate/protected from state influence not that the pilgrims' specific virtues are ideal, though.
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I would argue that we (as a collective society) have never authentically been about the freedom of religion, but the freedom to have a different state religion.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I think it’s widely assumed that the American pilgrims journey to America was to escape from religious persecution, which reads as if they were escaping fanaticism. If what I learned recently is accurate, the pilgrims weren’t victims of fanatic persecution, but were the religious fanatics whose fanaticism was unwelcome in England. Would be like the Westboro Baptist Church being pressured to move out of Kansas to Utah.
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yeah i know that - i just don't think it matters except for people to snort and say "religious freedom? more like the pilgrims were assholes and americans are assholes, amirite?"

the concept of being able to practice religion without the State interfering has an example in the pilgrims bc it's actually true.

the founders were reflecting on Europe's history where the State religion effectively ruled the state and whole classes of people were routinely exiled, dispossed of their shit and murdered, not even including wars fought b/c national/cultural identity was tied to religious belief. I think we sort of forget how intwined religion/person/governemtn was was for Europe until almost the 20th century.

I'm not saying american policy has not used religion as a propaganda prybar thoughout it's history, but it's very different than Roman Catholics vs Hugenots, for example
 
I realized my post was lazy so I deleted before you responded. Based on what we know of Puritanical society, there’s no way to take serious the claims that pilgrims were seeking to have a society where government didn’t interfere or impose religion on society - the Puritans just wanted to impose their version of Christianity on society.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I realized my post was lazy so I deleted before you responded. Based on what we know of Puritanical society, there’s no way to take serious the claims that pilgrims were seeking to have a society where government didn’t interfere or impose religion on society - the Puritans just wanted to impose their version of Christianity on society.
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so what? I don't understand why the pilgrim's beliefs necessarily intersect with the desire to avoid intwining the government with a national religion. b/c the founders specifcially did not want a national religious identity, in spite of the pilgrims.

im not versed on it, but i'd imagine the whole creation of the "piligrims escape fantasy" was a late 18th/19th century mythbuilding thing
 
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Because there’s probably a closer truth to the character and desire of our nation than just what a group of rich white guys ripped off from Thomas Paine 70 years later when they were mad about taxes.
 
I’m not really inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to societal and political structures whose belief in the freedom of religion manifested by chaining human people with their own unique religious traditions in balconies to listen to their myths and killing off indigenous people who didn’t follow the same myths and traditions. I don’t particularly care what words they wrote while in their little social clubs.
 
If it’s important for us to point out the hypocrisy our political leaders every day, seems it should be even more important to recognize that the country was founded on hypocrisy - helps explain things
 
America hasn’t even really been about freedom of Christianity throughout its history. Just look at governmental responses to early Mormonism, liberation theology in black churches in the civil rights movement, and dozens of other new religious movements throughout history.
 
More like freedom of EVANGELICAL Christanity amirite?

Joking aside though, I wouldn't be surprised to see an erosion of non-Christian 1st Amendment rights with conservative justices over the next decade+
 
I think the original consensus may have been you have the freedom to have your own beliefs within a society that norm based Puritan Wasp standards. So believe what you want, but in public this is the expectation. Then something changed and it became - society should change to my beliefs (some good and bad in there) and then it became complete freedom of everything society should allow everyone to think and in many ways act on a million individual beliefs.
 
Deacon92 said:
I think the original consensus may have been you have the freedom to have your own beliefs within a society that norm based Puritan Wasp standards. So believe what you want, but in public this is the expectation. Then something changed and it became - society should change to my beliefs (some good and bad in there) and then it became complete freedom of everything society should allow everyone to think and in many ways act on a million individual beliefs.
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I've read this several times and do not really understand what you're talking about.
 
Well, if we don't enforce some religious or moral standards pretty soon we'll have people marrying goats and shit.

Least that's whut I hear frum some conservative friends/acquaintances.
 
ConnorEl said:
Well, if we don't enforce some religious or moral standards pretty soon we'll have people marrying goats and shit.

Least that's whut I hear frum some conservative friends/acquaintances.
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The funny thing about this joke is perhaps the biggest erosion of morality in American society would be accepting owning people as normative. Oops turns out we already did that for a few hundred years and religion was a pretty big piece of the infrastructure to do so.
 
PhDeac said:
First you get the Money. Then you get the Power. After you get the Power, people will Respect you. That’s the key to life. You’ll be eating right. You can sleep at night.
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It starts with sugar...
 
ImTheCaptain said:
i mean that's one precursor to religious freedom but I don't think that's the only lineage
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A fav t from my stint in Gatlinburg.

Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom FROM religion.
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Yes you asshole. It means I have freedom from your religion.
 
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