These assholes never, ever remember that the whole thing about separation of church and state was because of Christians escaping persecution from OTHER CHRISTIANS.
It wasn’t satan after the Pilgrims, it was the bastard Church of England. It wasn’t satan after the Huguenots, it was the state church of France, Catholicism. Ditto the Scottish followers of John Knox, that was the Catholics as well, until some royal died and another was born and then it was the Catholics persecuted, etc.
And that doesn’t even address all the church splits and splinters creating other groups that were widely despised by all the “mainstream” Christians in their time, like the Anabaptists and the Baptists and the Mennonites and the Shakers and the Quakers – and on and on and on the list of Christians directly persecuted by other Christians in the Old World goes.
(Reading this, you might well think, “How could anyone hate a Quaker?” Good question. The answer is that for as peaceful and non-confrontational as Quakers are, at the root of it they believe in following their own inner what-have-you, and that is literally unacceptable to any group that needs your faith to keep you well-positioned and exploitable. The Quakers (and the Shakers) terrified power-seekers, authoritarians, and government-sponsored state religions back in the day when religious identity was used to regulate so much of daily living, because they simply opted out of it. Cue the inevitable inter-Christian persecution.)
Then these groups brought all that shit with them to the New World, or were chased here by it, persecutor and persecuted alike. By the time the Constitution was written, many people had had enough, including Thomas Jefferson. The First Amendment was supposed to literally “put a brick wall” between church and state to end that shit for good.
And look at where we are now. History is absofuckinglutely guaranteed to repeat itself here.
When these present-day Bible-pounding “Freedom of Religion” American Christians run out of outgroups – people of other faiths and other skin tones – they will turn against each other again, just like they have consistently and reliably for the last 2,000 years.
They don’t just fail to understand separation of church and state, it’s like they just woke up and have no fucking idea how it even got here, without even a clue that their own religious forebears were both persecuted and persecutor alike.
They will remember soon enough. When a state takes a religion it is typically pressured to get very specific, and then persecute (convert or imprison / execute) those that do not conform.
This was is the crux of the issue in the troubles, which is itching to start up again.
True that. On all counts. And it’s pretty clear that’s exactly where the right wing wants to take this pseudo-Christian religious domination: into a codified platform of national power. The First Amendment won’t be the only part of the Constitution to go, the whole thing will be toast except for whatever bits they like, but that’s possibly the worst as it opens the door to entire new waves of “thoughtcrime” surveillance and enforcement.
As an aside, I remember being thunderstruck pre-Brexit about people like Boris Johnson kicking that whole can up the road, not even talking about it, setting aside the Irish border entirely as though it would be easy to resolve in the future, even though it had already lasted hundreds of years prior and the Good Friday Agreement wasn’t even yet 20 years old. In the end, Ireland – both of them – were left out of the Brexit planning entirely. It is to their own credit on both sides IMO that they, not Westminster, have kept things calm.
EDITED TO ADD: When a religion goes national, it’s also usually the excuse for a massive transfer of assets and wealth to the state as well as to its most favored private supporters, such as when Henry VIII created the CoE and took all the abbeys and monasteries and churches, as well as their land and gold, for himself and his favorites. He did it in steps, but in the end he also did it quite completely. Given that this rising Christian Nationalism in the US is primarily evangelical in flavor, the Catholics may end up losing some property and cash yet again, this time 500-ish years later in the New World.
These assholes never, ever remember that the whole thing about separation of church and state was because of Christians escaping persecution from OTHER CHRISTIANS.
It wasn’t satan after the Pilgrims, it was the bastard Church of England. It wasn’t satan after the Huguenots, it was the state church of France, Catholicism. Ditto the Scottish followers of John Knox, that was the Catholics as well, until some royal died and another was born and then it was the Catholics persecuted, etc.
And that doesn’t even address all the church splits and splinters creating other groups that were widely despised by all the “mainstream” Christians in their time, like the Anabaptists and the Baptists and the Mennonites and the Shakers and the Quakers – and on and on and on the list of Christians directly persecuted by other Christians in the Old World goes.
(Reading this, you might well think, “How could anyone hate a Quaker?” Good question. The answer is that for as peaceful and non-confrontational as Quakers are, at the root of it they believe in following their own inner what-have-you, and that is literally unacceptable to any group that needs your faith to keep you well-positioned and exploitable. The Quakers (and the Shakers) terrified power-seekers, authoritarians, and government-sponsored state religions back in the day when religious identity was used to regulate so much of daily living, because they simply opted out of it. Cue the inevitable inter-Christian persecution.)
Then these groups brought all that shit with them to the New World, or were chased here by it, persecutor and persecuted alike. By the time the Constitution was written, many people had had enough, including Thomas Jefferson. The First Amendment was supposed to literally “put a brick wall” between church and state to end that shit for good.
And look at where we are now. History is absofuckinglutely guaranteed to repeat itself here.
When these present-day Bible-pounding “Freedom of Religion” American Christians run out of outgroups – people of other faiths and other skin tones – they will turn against each other again, just like they have consistently and reliably for the last 2,000 years.
They don’t just fail to understand separation of church and state, it’s like they just woke up and have no fucking idea how it even got here, without even a clue that their own religious forebears were both persecuted and persecutor alike.
They will remember soon enough. When a state takes a religion it is typically pressured to get very specific, and then persecute (convert or imprison / execute) those that do not conform.
This
wasis the crux of the issue in the troubles, which is itching to start up again.True that. On all counts. And it’s pretty clear that’s exactly where the right wing wants to take this pseudo-Christian religious domination: into a codified platform of national power. The First Amendment won’t be the only part of the Constitution to go, the whole thing will be toast except for whatever bits they like, but that’s possibly the worst as it opens the door to entire new waves of “thoughtcrime” surveillance and enforcement.
As an aside, I remember being thunderstruck pre-Brexit about people like Boris Johnson kicking that whole can up the road, not even talking about it, setting aside the Irish border entirely as though it would be easy to resolve in the future, even though it had already lasted hundreds of years prior and the Good Friday Agreement wasn’t even yet 20 years old. In the end, Ireland – both of them – were left out of the Brexit planning entirely. It is to their own credit on both sides IMO that they, not Westminster, have kept things calm.
EDITED TO ADD: When a religion goes national, it’s also usually the excuse for a massive transfer of assets and wealth to the state as well as to its most favored private supporters, such as when Henry VIII created the CoE and took all the abbeys and monasteries and churches, as well as their land and gold, for himself and his favorites. He did it in steps, but in the end he also did it quite completely. Given that this rising Christian Nationalism in the US is primarily evangelical in flavor, the Catholics may end up losing some property and cash yet again, this time 500-ish years later in the New World.