God And Country: America's True History Of Religious Tolerance

Smithsonian Magazine:

The idea that the United States has always been a bastion of religious freedom is reassuring -- and utterly at odds with the historical record.

Read the whole story: Smithsonian Magazine

Comments

[bjwtaylor]

05:06 PM on 09/29/2010

The article overlooks a pertinent saying: "The Puritans came to America to escape persecution in order that they might freely persecute others."

As the article indicates, however, the Puritans were far from the only ones. Most groups persecuted others to varying degrees, with many jurisdictions writing the intolerance into law.

The worst example is the Indian boarding schools established in the latter part of the 1800's and still open through at least the closing of the Phoenix Indian School in 1988. Indian children were forcibly taken from their parents and sent to the boarding schools that were run much like military prisons. The children were not allowed to leave and were hunted down and returned if the escaped.

The purpose of the schools was to turn Indian children into white Christians, except for the skin. (They were sometimes called 'apples,' red on the outside, but white on the inside.) They were drilled in Christianity, along with other "white" ways, forcibly converted, and punished severely for any practice of Indian religion or spirituality, even if the particular practice coincided perfectly with Christianity.

If government seizure of children from parents, forcibly converting them, and denying them the practice of their own religion is not government sanction and support of one religion against another, I don't know what is.

It was forbidden by federal law and for anyone to practice any Indian ritual until 1978.

That grievous injustice is not completely over yet. Some few Americans still support it.

[Kenneth Davis]

03:59 PM on 09/28/2010

I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your Comments. As my post of this date shows, we love to talk about religion but don't know what we are talking about most of the time. I hope you will read that as well.

[BillyClub]

12:41 PM on 09/27/2010

Bless the Founders for the First Amendment and the "Separation of Church and State Clause." Each generation has to stand up for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Much has been lost under the reign of Bush-Cheney. I'm sorry to say this: The shredding of the Constitution continues under Obama. He is Bush Lite!

[rightorwrong]

10:57 AM on 09/27/2010

Great Smithsonian Article.
Todays Gallup article on the concentration of old white male protestants within the conservative ranks is rooted in these founding principles. A stange breed these American protestants- uniquely individual. Born of an angry anticatholic backround they define their own views of doctrine and tolerance. Born in freedom and liberty to individually define very liberally what they are tolerant of and what should be tarred and feathered. Glenn Beck vs Joseph Smith Vs Mitt Romney.
A faith tradition needs to have a governing authority to encompass tolerance. A Presbytery, Bishop, Council or Pope will always take the responbility of tolerating or not tolerating other faith traditions. When "I" get to define what a Muslim or Baptist or Jew is, I can be intolerant without being a Racist or Bigot. Or can I . Without a governing authority the individual will argue that the followin sentence does not include Muslims.:
: “May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
The rightwing protestant self defined by his/her community mega-church is an american tradition of intolerance bred in this countries anti-catholic beginnings. Faith traditions need governance - Worship is defined by the individual

[digoweli]

10:38 AM on 09/27/2010

That the Smithsonian would leave out the most egregious act of discrimination that could only be settled by an act of Congress in the year 1978, Freedom of Religion Act for American Indians, is strange considering that the Smithsonian houses the Museum of the American Indian. From 1883 at the institution of the American Indian Religious Crimes Codes down to 1978 traditional American Indian Priests and practitioners were jailed for praying outside the European Churches. My adopted father had to incorporate a "temple" in seven states for Native Americans not to be hassled by the police for practicing traditional faiths. It was called a "Temple Adanvto Adanudo" Temple of the Great Spirit and was in place until 1978 when we could once again practice the Traditional Keetoowah Faith, the Sundance, the Longhouse, the Medewin and the other faiths. It took an act of the UN to keep the Yarok's sacred practices from being destroyed in the 1980s by the U.S. Supreme Court and they have done their best to destroy the Native American Church. That America still considers Indians in the modality of the Samuel Morton racist anthropologists vein of inferiority is clear by the exclusivity of this article. Pity. We are all citizens and we all deserve to be heard.

[Kenneth Davis]

03:51 PM on 09/28/2010

I am glad the writer brings this matter to our attention. As the author of the article, I agree this act deserved mention. The general subject of the article could, of course, have filled a book --or two, Unfortunately my space was limited. I have addressed the subject of Native Americans and Christianity in several books, including the Spanish attitudes towards natives as well as the Puritan attitudes toward Catholic converts among the New England natives (in my book America's Hidden History); the mission system in California (in my recent book A Nation Rising); and in other of my works such as Don't Know Much About Mythology, in which I discuss Native American beliefs at some length, as well as Santeria.

[digoweli]

11:09 PM on 09/28/2010

There is no equivalency here. None of these people had the surgeon general of the U.S. ordering the troops doing battle with people of another faith taking the heads of the fallen away from their families and religion and sending them to the Smithsonian. Thousands of Indian's heads were "collected" for science after the battles. (Dewar "Bones", Bieder "Science and the American Indian".) None of these groups had the entire scientific establishment of the nation label them as inferior and not worth more than a whipped horse as Samuel Morton did. None of them had Franz Boas, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft or Lewis Cass chasing their case and telling the world that their language was incapable of religious faith or even logic. And none of them had their faiths banned as the Keetoowah faith was and it's leader thrown into jail because the religion had a tie to the land that the government wanted for white Christian citizens of all faiths. But it was the Christian Churches that fought the scientists declaring that we were human after all and capable of learning. How could you speak of these other events while avoiding the events that murdered millions over religion? This is an issue much more serious than civil rights and even today the patronizing attitude toward our religion whose cousins around the world amount to 123 million people, is a disgrace. That was my point. You complained about a mote and missed the log.

[ColoradoTaxpayer]

11:53 PM on 09/26/2010

Benjamin Franklin on religion
To Ezra Stiles, 9 March 1790 (B 12:185-6):
You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

[Kenneth Davis]

03:54 PM on 09/28/2010

Franklin also wrote in the same letter:
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of morals and his religion...the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have some doubts as to his divinity." (Can you doubt Christ's divinity and be a Christian?") Franklin closed by saying, "I have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments...I hope to go out of the world in peace with all of them."

[Susana de la Luz]

10:17 PM on 09/26/2010

I belong to an American ethnic group that was prohibited by numerous Federal and State directives, policies and laws from practicing its religions until the enactment of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.

One need merely read the annual and special reports of the Office of Indian Affairs (predecessor of the Bureau of Indian Affairs) to understand this country's approach to the "Indian problem." In those documents, one discovers that one of the longstanding goals of official Federal policy with regard to this "problem" was the forced "Christianization" and "civilization" of American Indians. This policy led to the establishment of the infamous Indian Boarding Schools where Native children, often forcibly removed from their families, were punished for speaking their languages, uttering a Native prayer or wearing any items of cultural significance.

On a personal note -- I am one of those whose "Coming of Age" ceremony, an innocuous four-day event central to the culture of my "tribe," had to be conducted in secret because it was, until 1978, specifically prohibited by Federal directives.

All that said, I suppose we should be grateful that the recommendation of L. Frank Baum, author of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," was not put into effect. Shortly after the massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee, Baum suggested editorially that American Indians be exterminated.

[jweider]

03:12 PM on 09/26/2010

While many of our founding fathers may have had above average IQ's compared to their fellow countrymen at the time the average American was not really all that bright.
If you consider the Flynn effect which states that average IQ scores rise at a rate of 3% per decade, with scores being adjusted periodically so that 100 is always considered average IQ, the average person 200 years ago would have had an IQ of about 57 by today's standards.
Not exactly the type of role models we need in today's society.

[digoweli]

10:54 AM on 09/27/2010

Actually, this is incorrect. The myth of the dumb immigrant is belied by the number of cultural institutions in America prior to 1900. In the farm state of Iowa there were 1300 opera houses producing opera in 1900. There were Indian opera houses in Indian Territory at Pawhuska and Miami in 1900. I have a picture of the one in Miami on my reservation in my opera studio in New York City. When Shakespeare and Opera traveled to Colorado, the miners were so knowledgeable about culture that they knew when the texts were being cut so that the acting companies could make the train. On more than one occasion they tore up the house in protest to the theft of their cultural property. By comparison to today, America's audiences are dull, insensitive and unable to take a serious complex chord on the chin, a sentiment mirrored by Charles Ives about the only great American composer today that compares with Europe. Volume, video and four chords does not a serious culture make no matter how much money is involved. The present simply doesn't measure up to the past when it comes to the ability to handle complexity.

[Spazzznyc]

09:20 PM on 09/27/2010

My grandfather owned and read Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" as a boy in grade school in the 1920's. How many kids today are reading this type of literature at such an early age?

[Davest]

12:21 PM on 09/26/2010

Religion, killing *non-believers* for as long as you can imagine

[JLB98]

11:29 AM on 09/26/2010

It amazes me how the founding fathers are put up on such a high pedestal. They may have wrote the constitution, which they had African Americans not even full humans. They love god so much that they owned slaves.

[kilthistle]

02:41 PM on 09/26/2010

Just to be clear, the Bible condones slavery. It was "The Enlightenment" thinkers who began to condemn slavery as contrary to their belief in the rights of every individual, no matter what the Bible says.

By the way, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine did not own slaves. A minority to be sure, but in the future, when making blanket statements about the Founding Fathers owning slaves, please note these men as exceptions.

[JLB98]

03:52 PM on 09/26/2010

of course the bible condone slavery and the it approved suppressing of women. yes there were a few that did not own slaves. But they ALL signed the constitution.

[digoweli]

11:22 AM on 09/27/2010

For a justification of slavery you should read about the life of the founder of American Anthropology Samuel Morton and the founder of the Museum of Natural History Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Science in the 19th century decreed that Africans were inferior to European Caucasians by virtue of evolution. Indians were below Africans. That belief still exists in the "homeland". But, because the scientists were preaching a separate genesis and a separate race and the churches were preaching one genesis and racial elevation through Christianity and education, it was science that made the mess to begin with. (Steven Jay Gould, "The Mismeasurement of Man.") Science also justified slavery and the genocide of Native Peoples. Religion fought with science every step of the way. Today's religions mirror the old Samuel Morton views on the superiority of Christianity without the slavery and Indian stuff. Unless, that is, you read D'Souza and his defense of slavery as property which is the same historical claptrap that was best science of the day 1840 and which justified the death march of the civilized Cherokees to Oklahoma with as many deaths as suffered in 9/11 with a much lower population base.

[sunshine14]

09:34 AM on 09/26/2010

I believe God is testing America of their true faithfulness, obedience  to God. Christ said, a Dr does not go to the healthy but the sick.
God tested all his chosen ones first all prophets, . Abraham, Moses Christ , all disciples etc. All were poor, all were crushed first, and all were greatly persecuted in serving God. We all have a purpose, all that God created has a purpose a work to serve God. I believe America is being tested of their true faithfulness to God.

God pays no one $100,000 dollars a hr to do God's work. Nor $43 million in wages to do God's work. All that God chose were crushed first, tested first, and chose to remain poor, serving the poor. A flower when crushed gives off the strongest scent. Wheat when crushed can be used, to make bread to feed others. Beware of every word that rolls off our tongue of others, for we all each one will be held accountable. St Paul said: Keep your conscience clear, for our own conscience will bare witness against us. Love your enemies as I have loved YOU- MY enemies also. For all are sinners.    

[Tree201]

09:17 AM on 09/26/2010

Throughout American history there have been the people who want to repress and control and the people who want to progress and be free.

[jcabowers]

11:44 PM on 09/25/2010

The Christian Right should not look to the Founding Fathers in an attempt to legitimate their avowed desire to integrate Christianity and Government. While I cannot and will agree with them on the issue, I do not begrudge them their view on the matter so long as they do not falsely attribute a similar belief to Washington, et al.

[kilthistle]

02:14 AM on 09/26/2010

"so long as they do not falsely attribute a similar belief to Washington, et al."

Unfortunately, that is exactly what they are doing.

http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?

id=23909http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/10/03/the_founders_intended_a_christian,_not_secular,_society

[kilthistle]

02:17 AM on 09/26/2010

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/10/03/the_founders_intended_a_christian,_not_secular,_society

Maybe this link will work.

[henrypapillon]

11:42 PM on 09/25/2010

The Christians have always been very adamant in pushing THEIR religion and most of the time, even their specific version of that. And right at this time, a kid trying to make it to the top is rewarded with references and scholarships if he is Christian, usually in the manner of those giving out rewards, and a kid without religion is met with much less rewards, no matter the brilliance.

[FlGlades]

09:08 PM on 09/25/2010

http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html