[Vision2020] and speaking of religion in public places

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Good Morning Visionaries:

Bill Sali just doesn't learn.  He doesn't care about accuracy, because he's still spouting the nonsense about abortion and breast cancer.

Here is my response to Sali's rant in the Lewiston paper this morning.  I'll post it on his DC website and mark once again "please answer," but I don't expect one because he has yet to answer a previous one about Muslim democracies.

I would like to join Sean in denouncing the quotation from Washington as false and referring readers to my published essay "Religious Liberalism and the Founding Fathers" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/
foundfathers.htm.

I would also like for Sali to explain to us how basic Christian principles differ in any substantial way from Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu principles.  He should be warned that pronouncements from the extremists of these faiths will be not be recognized by their coreligionists.

When John Adams spoke of the principles of Christianity, he, just as did many of his contemporaries, meant basic moral principles.  In a letter to Jefferson in 1813, he states: "Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense of the word." Both he and Jefferson rejected religious conservatives such as Sali and denied the Trinity and the deity of Christ.

Sali is also doing a selective reading of Ben Franklin. He also rejected the deity of Christ and the Trinity and stopped going to church because of Sali-type preachers. 

In debates about the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, Franklin objected to the specific biblical references in the following statement: office holders were required to "acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration." Franklin failed to convince delegates that this would exclude Jews and Muslims. 

Please read my essay "Tolerance for Islam in the Early American Republic" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/
AmericaIslam.htm for some striking proclamations about the acceptance of Muslims in America, even as the Muslim Barbary pirates=terrorists were capturing our citizens.

These early Americans would be shocked at Sali's ignorance and intolerance.

Nick Gier