FOR THE RECORD:
here is TJ opinion of a Calvinism vs
Constitutional Calvinist | The American Conservative
And TJ to John Adams. April II, 1823, ibid., p. 289: "I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false God, he did. The being described in five points, is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin."
45 Knowles, "The Religious Ideas . . .", pp. 203-204.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Constitutional Calvinist | The American Conservative
This is the best life of Connecticut’s foremost Founding Father ever written. More than that, it demonstrates once and for all that Calvinism played a very significant role in shaping the American Revolution and U.S. Constitution. Henceforth, historians will have to take account of Mark David Hall’s book in all studies of “the creation of the American republic.”
Hall sets out to correct a serious flaw in the historiography. While prominent accounts of the American Revolution’s intellectual underpinnings devote considerable attention to the influence of Lockean, classical republican, Scottish Enlightenment traditions, the influence of Reformed Protestantism—that is, Calvinism—tends to be overlooked. Although the focus is on Sherman’s political thinking, Hall tell us, his book shows that the Reformed tradition was central to the thought of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Oliver Ellsworth, Jonathan Trumbull, William Paterson, John Witherspoon, and several other prominent Calvinist politicians as well.
As Hall puts it, “I am not arguing that Calvinism was the only influence on Sherman and his colleagues, simply that it was a very important influence that needs to be taken more seriously if we are to appreciate the political theory and actions of many of America’s founders.” Hall here continues the project on which he, Daniel L. Dreisbach, and Jeffry H. Morrison have long been jointly and severally embarked: that of fleshing out the story of religion’s influence on the politics of the Revolution and Early Republic.
Hall decries the tendency to write as if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams (a group disproportionately composed of deists and marginally committed Christians) were the entirety of the Revolutionary generation, and then to deduce the meaning of America’s original commitment to religious freedom from the ideas of those men. One illustration of this tendency is that, by Hall’s calculation, Supreme Court justices writing opinions about the First Amendment’s religion clauses have referred to Thomas Jefferson 112 times and to Sherman only three, even though Sherman helped write the First Amendment and Jefferson was away on diplomatic business in France at the time.
UPDATED
NOTFOOLEDBYW - YOU ARE A FILTHY LIAR. SEE THE UPDATES THAT PROVE SAME. Bolded for everyone's convenience below the stats in item # 1
NOTFOOLEDBYW'S FINAL RESPONSE
This thread is now 917 posts long as I begin this response. Of those, NOTFOOLEDBYW has made a total of
168 posts. They are posts # 78, 80, 111, 113, 118, 126, 140, 154, 157, 158, 159, 162, 172, 174, 179, 189, 192, 195, 196, 197, 203, 204, 205, 212, 220, 224, 225, 232, 233, 234, 235, 240, 240, 241, 242, 243, 246, 247, 254, 255, 256, 267, 279, 280, 285, 290, 296, 297, 302, 307, 309, 318, 321, 328, 330, 335, 339, 340, 341, 345, 347, 350, 350, 351, 352, 367, 370, 373, 381, 393, 394, 399, 401, 404, 411, 412, 413, 420, 421, 425, 426, 429, 430, 431, 432, 468, 485, 500, 504, 508, 512, 516, 519, 525, 527, 537, 539, 541, 546, 549, 551, 554, 557, 559, 561, 563, 565, 566, 569, 570, 574, 577, 581, 582, 587, 589, 606, 607, 610, 626, 630, 636, 642, 644, 646, 684, 688, 699, 700, 703, 704, 707, 708, 709, 715, 716, 718, 724, 725, 730, 740, 744, 746, 747, 750, 753, 754, 755, 761, 762, 769, 774, 782, 7998, 800, ... that is 155 posts out of 805, 807, 812, 824, 827, 830, 831, 832, 844, 847, 860, 872, 899, 904
In virtually every post NOTFOOLEDBYW has insulted posters, called them liars, misrepresented people, and
NOBODY has defended his positions.
By contrast, NOTFOOLEDBYW has been challenged by numerous posters to whom NOTFOOLEDBYW has called liars, fools, morons, and accused them of all manner of wrongdoing. Those posters responded a total of
126 times in posts: #120, 130, 134, 167, 169,174, 176, 175, 176, 180, 185, 206, 207, 250, 282, 299, 346, 346, 354, 396, 397, 403, 405, 406, 407, 414, 415, 416, 424, 427, 428, 433, 434, 438, 439, 440, 445, 446, 447, 448, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 458, 460, 461, 464, 465, 466, 467, 469, 470, 472, 474, 476, 483, 484, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 496, 497, 498, 499, 501, 502, 517, 518, 521, 526, 528, 531, 558, 562, 564, 567, 568, 571, 573, 576, 578, 579, 588, 591, 593, 594, 595, 596, 598, 599, 600, 603, 608, 612, 613, 615, 618, 627, 628, 629, 633, 645, 648, 653, 658, 665, 668, 698, 701, 705, 706, 711, 722, 723, 726, 751, 764, 765, 779
I have been obliged to respond to NOTFOOLEDBYW a total of
85 times personally. That is a total of
379+ posts that have revolved around this one poster. I'm not updating any posters that responded beyond post # 805
One poster or another has successfully defeated each and every argument he brings to the table.
He is now remaining, claiming I lied about Thomas Jefferson - as if that would change the balance of this discussion. Here is my position:
1) When other posters began discussing this as a conversation rather than a point by point, let's prove everything, I got conversational. I quoted Thomas Jefferson from an unnamed source in an online general conversation.
I really do not want to restart any conversations with THIS idiot about Thomas Jefferson and my quote. But, I cut and pasted the quote as I found it on the Internet:
http://peace2you.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Faith-of-Founding-Fathers1.pdf
If you look a few quotes down, you can see where I got it from. When that troll made a big deal out of my inadvertent faux pas of leaving out the link, I looked up the book from where the quote was obtained and put it in post #552. I DIDN'T LIE AND NOTFOOLEDBYW IS A ROTTEN, FILTHY, STINKING, LIAR. ALL of his posts were responded to honestly and openly. Check his posts... he's quoting me and it's there.
2) NOTFOOLEDBYW seized upon that accusing me of posting a lie; even claiming that I edited my source. I did not. I did, however, look at where my source got their material and I quoted where it could be found. I did not lie
3) Regardless of how that material reads, the bottom line is Thomas Jefferson said he was a Christian and I took him at his word as his early life indicates such. J
efferson states, and it was quoted on this thread, that his life experiences changed his outlook. Nothing has changed what Jefferson said at that point in his life
4) Regardless of how many times founders did or said one thing or another, I look at the bottom line and if over half the posts here are either one man arguing against those points compared to the scores of posts disagreeing with him, there is no point to prove.
If this matters to you and you want to wade through who said what, you have each post - minus my own (which is unnecessary since all those people who agreed with me either quoted the relevant parts and / or the post itself. My point here is I did not lie and every time that troll posts, I will simply cut and paste this response (that took some hours to research just for him.)
If he still wants to call me a liar, he can do it to my face. Otherwise, he has been successfully defeated by other posters to the point that nothing I have to say would be relevant anyway.
IF there are any other points to be addressed, I will be happy to entertain them, just not by the resident troll. The dumb ass needs to read. This post refutes his account of what happened.. I know because I'm the one who did it. I copied and pasted the ******* quote as it appeared and no amount of political jockeying will change that. It's over dumbass