>Robert Chassell posted: > An article in Asia Times Online http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EJ28Aa02.html <snipped rest>
This article presents some thought-provoking viewpoints on America's founding and upon religion-in-government, particularly as it appears to reflect the [Asian? Muslim? non-Western? fringe?] belief that the US is purely a fount of 'radical Protestantism.' I found the title, "Mahathir is right: Jews do rule the world," provocative and quite misleading, although this qualifies it in rather better fashion: "Jews played a small role in the creation of the American colonies, and a marginal role in the revolution, but American democracy stemmed from Jewish ideas. That is quite different from Mahathir's claim that Jews "invented" democracy. No conspiracy can invent democracy of the American kind." While many of the early colonists in America were unquestionably, as noted in this article, motivated by a fervent search for religious freedom, the framers of the Constitution were more influenced by the European Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was itself influenced by Jewish traditions and scholars, yet to call it "Jewish" is an overstatement: "Adam Sutcliffe shows how the widespread and enthusiastic fascination with Judaism prevalent around 1650 was largely eclipsed a century later by attitudes of dismissal and disdain. He argues that Judaism was uniquely difficult for Enlightenment thinkers to account for, and that their intense responses, both negative and positive, to Jewish topics are central to an understanding of the underlying ambiguities of the Enlightenment itself." From: http://books.cambridge.org/0521820154.htm A more detailed review of this book is at: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i25/25a01601.htm "...In what Mr. Sutcliffe describes as a "barbed embrace," early Enlightenment thinkers simultaneously idealized and repudiated Judaism, an attraction-repulsion that surfaced repeatedly. Indeed, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, philo-Semitism and Judeophobia were "frequently intertwined in the same text and even in the same sentence..." In a later paragraph of the article, it is stated: "There is another dimension to this as well, namely the theological. If the constitution is the bone of American democracy, radical Protestant theology forms its bone marrow." Many of the "Founding Fathers" of America professed Deist or Unitarian belief(s) in a Divinity, and were not "radical Protestants," which to a modern ear implies fundamentalist/extremist Christians. They wanted to base the political structure of the new country on Reason and 'principles of Nature.' George Washington said that every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." From _The_Age_of_ Reason_ by Thomas Paine comes: "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." http://www.youdebate.com/DEBATES/founding_fathers_religion.HTM Intriguingly, there may also have been some influence from the Native American Iroquois Confederacy, which had a formal constitution with many democratic features, and was framed before any significant contact with Europeans. This article relates the current scholarly discussion: http://www.campton.sau48.k12.nh.us/iroqconf.htm ...and this lists the various influences on the US Constitution: http://www.constitution.org/cs_found.htm ...among which they listed the Iroquois constitution: http://www.constitution.org/cons/iroquois.txt George Washington's above quoted statement, with the addition of "or woman" and "or her own," fits my personal viewpoint. Note: This post is based on the response I emailed to the publishers of the article, in hopes of showing that most Americans are not Boykinists, but are also a 'silent majority.*' *How many of our moderate viewpoints get any press in Arab, Muslim or non-Western press/TV? Do the vast majority of people for whom this article was written _believe_ that we are all Bible-waving, gun-toting zealots? And what does it mean for the chances of peace and tolerance if they do? Debbi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
