Ken Burns and Krista Tippett talk about America's religious roots
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- Опубликовано: 15 май 2024
- Ken Burns sits down with the iconic journalist and host of the @onbeing podcast, Krista Tippett. They discuss everything from AI, to mortality, and how faith has influenced American history and politics from its very origin. Ken describes his inspiration behind covering figures like Waldo Ralph Emerson and the Shakers in his films and how they helped define American spirituality.
UNUM: One nation, many stories.
UNUM is a new way to explore American history through scenes selected from over 40 films by Ken Burns. We're constantly curating new topics, providing historical context for the conversations we are having today. 
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Ken’s recent graduation speech was out of the park. One of the most powerful and timely speeches I have heard in a long time. He is a national treasure.
My spiritual background as a Christian child was filled with fear and guilt from age 6. Leaving this now
Same here. It took me so many years to understand how misguided those denominations are that boil the faith down to individual hell avoidance. I'm 72 and it's only been in the last 10 years of intense Bible study that I've come to have a completely revamped faith. The Bible does not support so much of what we were taught. I suddenly see that my purpose is, as much as possible, to live and love like Jesus. Full stop. This has been so liberating and it's made it much simpler to think in terms of how my words and actions can advance God's kingdom here on earth each day. Blessings on your journey.
I grew up that way too, and walked away for many years. I missed the close community. I found a very main stream church with rainbow flags, and sign language, and wheelchair ramps, and a female priest.
Me too, as I left my evangelical church at age 16. I became a professor of Buddhism and found a world completely different from anything I experienced. In fact, I'm now also involved with the Anglicans (Episcopal) and Friends (Quakers), groups very different from the close-minded world I grew up with. Now that I've read the Bible quite carefully after my Mom's death two years ago, I realize that these folks I grew up with have never actually read their Bible. They literally don't know the contents. It's pathetic and very sad to see, because they follow ministers on bended knee who are typically on some sort of horrific ego-trip. If you read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, you receive an absolutely different impression from the world taught by the vast majority of evangelicals. And now they've taken in a more destructive route even than before in the US, tragically.
I’m sorry. I hope your humanity is set free in whatever way is good for you. Whatever ways help you know that you are good.
@brianruppert1071 I couldn't agree with you more. You've identified so many of the problems with modern Christianity. I'm glad that I'm affiliated with a United Methodist Church that places a high value on daily living and loving like Jesus.
I’m 77 now and am thankful for my fairly unreligious childhood. We were raised by the golden rule “treat others as you would like to be treated” This applied to all life on earth. (I later learned that some of my forebears were Pantheists) Empathy, honesty and caring were stressed. No corporal punishment for a couple of generations back. I grew up with a moral compass and love. I did expose my kids to a progressive United Church when they were young, but they didn’t continue. They are doing what they can to protect the earth, to be kind, helpful and good citizens. I guess some religions can help if you don’t have a loving community, but so often it is too dogmatic.
My mother grew up in the old Scottish Presbyterian ways, which seemed to me about controlling bad behaviour with threats of heaven and hell. Grandmother did like to use bad luck. ie “bad luck to put your hat on the dinner table”. Etc. Love it
Same here
Sorry for your wrong thoughts. But the Bible is very amazingly scientifically accurate with round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more. Many other religions like Hinduism cannot make such claims
"Those who are on the road
must have a code that they can live by..."
Crosby, Stills and Nash.
The hippies knew that to remove the old code requires a new one.
What an enlivening conversation. Thank you!
O Ken, you're so open and inclusive in your spirituality! What a nice guy!! O and your walks with your dog ! Such kindness! How wonderful your life is!! All is love!!
Yawn
Thank you, but you must be referring to another Ken.
The American Founders did not make America using the Bible or Christianity. They made it on ideas from the Enlightenment period, which emphasized reason over religion. The Enlightenment concept of “separation of church and state” was adopted because, everywhere in America, religion was once again persecuting non/wrong believers, exactly the problem for which they left Europe. The Founding Fathers made this crystal clear in the Treaty of Tripoli on 1797: “As the Government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, …”. Look it up in Wikipedia and read the actual text. This treaty was signed by the entire Senate, unanimously, including President John Adams.
The founders thought that this republic could only survive if the people were Bible believers, citizens pursuing the good, the beautiful, and the true. They didn't want an official national denomination in order to protect religious freedom (the individual states had official state denominations, Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Congregational, etc).
@@MarkDouglass-dt9ky The U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention Christianity or any specific religion. The Declaration of Independence famously proclaims that people’s rights come from a “Creator” and “Nature’s God” - but doesn’t specify who or what that is. To suggest that the FF intended for everyone in the country to be "Bible believers" is absurd and contradicts what is spelled out in the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
@@ga6589They did intend that Creator to be God. Not a bunch of gods!
Bible has incredible scientific accuracy like round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more!
@@user-th9kl4tk5c What credible evidence do you have that the FF intended for our country's government to be based on ANY particular religion? Christianity is not mentioned once in the DI or Constitution, let alone a particular denomination. The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by Congress and signed by President John Adams, made clear that the US was not founded on Christianity. Would you be okay if laws are passed requiring that we post the Ten Commandments in all public buildings and schools, mandate church attendance and god-worship, and criminalize atheism?
Correct me if I misunderstand, but it appears that you are suggesting that the US was meant to exclude people who do not conform to a certain religious dogma, or that a certain set of religious beliefs should be the law of the land. This is not a government for the people, by the people, or the indivdual rights to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. It's a theocracy.
Oh the beauty of WONDER….we need more wonder in our lives
Bonhoeffer at 22 min. He's a man we should be paying attention to. He hit it on the head with his discussion of "cheap grace". Also, very interesting thought about the separation of church and state being put into place to protect the church. One can argue both directions of the protection, but the church really does need protection from politicians.
He did also show Ho Chi Minh was a brutal mass-murderer of landlords in North Vietnam in the 1950s. And Ho was.
But the Bible has incredible scientific accuracy like round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more. The Bible is a bigger enigma that the all of and the greatest of Egyptian Pyramids. So the Bible needs a special and revered place in the life of every person who can think.
In short. Burns deserves great credit for pointing out how bad North Vietnam was in the 1950s. But he is still just a regular man and cannot be revered!
Do not forget Martin Luther Kings critical question "What am I doing for others ?"
Refreshing conversation on a challenging subject. As a Methodist, I welcome the Golden Rule and being kind as I walk through this thing called life. 🥰
Thank you Krista and Ken. An important discussion.
As astute as this conversation is, both of these fine people fail to see the underlying presumption of Human Exceptionalism. We are only one species amongst millions and billions. A decidedly bigger-brained species for sure, but look what we have done to the life itself with those bigger brains! Why can we not see THAT?!
People need to unlearn everything that was passed down. I'm glad this is being talked about.
The problem of evil is the biggest blemish on humanity. What we have done is superficial as humans did not create anything in the world but was given them what God gave themwhich includes abilities.
Interesting point! Thank you!
Mom told me. I shouldn't ask questions about religion or politics if I wanted any friends. But I always question why people think, but they think can do what they do.
Outstanding! Thank you!
As a young girl I was told not to talk about politics or religion, so I was cut off. It took a long time for it to happen, but it happened nonetheless. Then over the years I had some powerful experiences, of many different types. In the search for understanding the experiences, I found various religions all over the world. However, my experience of spirituality is so deeply personal and unique, that I find it difficult to really convey it to anybody. Starting in 2015 when I thought I was getting involved with some fantastic meditation groups, they turned out to be QAnon groups, so that was a no-go for me and actually rather traumatizing. I look forward to having spiritual experience again, to having the space in my days and mind to allow this to be.
I found your conversation interesting and provocative, especially the candid attitude towards all we don't understand. As a long-time student of Gurdjieff, it reminded me of one of his indications of things that should be inculcated in children - Love of God but indifference to the saints. I do think that the huge shifts in society which you focused on are caused by inexorable forces acting on humanity, and as such, pointless to resist. Which underlines the rather snobbish and un-democratic idea (which I nevertheless believe) that what is necessary for the life of the Earth is a conscious nucleus of humans. To become one of them is an aim worthy of a life. Thanks for sharing your search.
Indifference to saints? Why?
@@ek6321 I can only offer my subjective understanding; take it or leave it as you wish. Indifference doesn't imply disdain or rejection, but rather impartiality. Love of God (or the Creator, or Life Force, etc.) transcends any intermediary such as churches, prophets, saints, which are inevitably limited in time and venue. Gurdjieff certainly made every effort to discourage people from putting him, the person, on a pedestal. "Take nothing I say on faith, but as something to be verified in yourself." If I find help from a saint, I embrace it, but not because it comes from a so-called saint.
The Best hour I spent in the past month!! Thank you
On this joyous day of Pentecost, the idea of all coming together in a common language is still a prayer, and thank God for that and also for all forms of "Church" including Sunday worship.
We're not perfect, our world sure isn't perfect, I saw this morning at 6:30 AM, ironically before the reading from Acts "these are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning", on the bus enroute to church, two ladies who were much the worse for wear, having apparently inhaled beer for breakfast. Nothing has changed in human nature since Biblical times, yet God's call to us remains the same. Alleluia.
Thank you for a thoughtful, intelligent and inclusive conversation about religious, and national lives today. I'll subscribe as I believe you have voices worth listening to.
Thank You❣️
“Wow”. That’s it? How insightful. I agree. Wow!
Thank you
I love Ken Burns......of course he has a lovely Dog ♥
Don’t stop searching for your spiritual home - there are churches like mine in NH that is all about bringing people together to support one another and the community. The Pastor emphasizes, (in his brief & timely sermons) in a humorous relatable way, that our faith or spirituality is not about rules and religious dogma but about challenging us to bring light, love and physical help to our members and the community & world around us. People are welcome no matter their background , beliefs or non -beliefs. The most important part of the service is often the Coffee Hour afterwards where we get to know each other better (no matter your political affiliation) or world view we learn to appreciate different views & learn from each other & to be a true friend to your neighbors in whatever way they may need. As a child, I often dreaded going to my hellfire and brimstone church - now it is a joy.
My Christian upbringing sustained and reinforced my value as a person in a country that sees me as something to be used for its personal gain.
May you find happiness & self confidence every day🪷
Bronson Alcott, John Greenleaf Whittier, Clara Barton, spoke of (and Whittier himself was healed by Christian Science) and many supported its founder, Mary Baker Eddy’s ideas of a God of the law/principle of only Good, wholeness, unity and health. No sin, disease or death in The One Life of the eternal consciousness of Spirit as explained in her book on spiritual mental healing “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Thank you for your wonderful sharing of your experiences and Spiritual depth.
It was possible to be a christian diest from 1750 to 1800 or so in this country. Diests prayed for guidance not favors. Remember, it was BenjarFranklin, who suggested a prayer at the Constitutional Convention. They told him to shut up and sit down but the point is a diest suggested we ask for guidance. What the Founders didn't believe in was particular providence or revelation. God's revelation was general, i.e., worldwide, available an apparent to EVERYONE. The laws of nature applied to everyone not just the catholic or muslim or protestant. Believing in a god who had no favorites allowed the possibility of recognizing the inherent, god-given value of ALL people.
Did it happen? No! Would they "remember the ladies?" Abigail Adams asked of her husband. No! He mocked her in his return correspondence. But, that's how it all started. When principles conflict with interests, interests win, unfortuneately.
As Burns commented, the Founders were intensely interested in classical virtues and those principles are reflected in what one might call a transcendent document. The only mention of gender in the Constitution is an off-hand reference to the presidency. Slavery is directly discouraged by all but one (fugitive return) paragraph. There are no other racial limits in the Constitution. Nor is there any positive reference to religion, Christianity, or Jesus (despite heavy pressure to the contrary).
Despite a host of personal and cultural defects, the Constitution is a remarkably inclusive, even aspirational, document. The failure is with our entire legal system as well as our national culture.
As Mark Twain commented, "A crime preserved in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law." (Just an amplification of your final comment.)
@@rodkuehn8157 - Here is how Kurt Andersen put it:
"When somebody asked Alexander Hamilton why the Framers hadn't mentioned God in the Constitution, his answer was deadpan hilarious: "We forgot." "
"Life" on Earth evolved over more than 3 BILLION years. Homos sapiens showed up barely "yesterday" in that time frame. Yet we have learned to insist that the Earth is all about humans! That arrogant, narrow-minded, ego-centric presumption is the very source of our imminent demise. Religion has imbued us with a BELIEF that we are the "chosen species", the very meaning of life itself. Look around you and assess how well we have managed that stewardship. Do a simple thought experiment : remove homo sapiens from the evolutionary history of the Earth, leaving everything else as it has naturally occurred. The Earth would now, at this very moment, be a pristine wilderness of burgeoning bio-diversity full of continuing potential, instead of a smoldering pit of war, ecological destruction, income disparities, ethnic hatred and hypocrisy.
Agree. This chosen species thing has been hijacked by bad, greedy mostly white men. My hope is we begin to see churches that try to turn people back toward the importance of nature, and if we do not pay attention to how nature has been damaged, we will suffer.
So beautifully expressed, @treefrog!
The yearnings are not all the same…..some yearn to control and other people yearn to share. This difference is fundamental and vast.
I would love for you to have included Christian Science, which was such an important emergence in early America. Its founder, Mary Bakker Eddy, calls faith “a chrysalis state of thought.” Rather than it being the end, faith is a vestibule of spirituality. She speaks of wilderness as “a vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears.”
It does not take religion. It takes each individual realizing they do not have the right to force their will on another. This takes care of all crime. The primary role of government should be to make sure no one does that.
May I suggest a new Kevin Burns special? The notion of science as either 'the answer' is based on the amazing comparison of Whitehead (who mentored Oppenheimer) vs. Wieman (one of the topics of the PhD of Martin Luther King Jr.). It asks the question, whether science or faith should lead us. Perhaps a hybrid is our future? Regarding these two historical figures, Yes, I'm writing a book to.compare these two tragic figures... And yes, I gained a patent signoff on AI with several universities :)
Franklins virtures remind me of Stoicism
If you are interested in this topic, I recommend the channel Seekers of Unity.
It is a shame that we have not yet grown out of this whole waste of energy and time the way we let go of the other myths like Zeus and Hera, Thor and Freya.
Such a sad frittering of time, effort, and lives.
The Tiny House Movement is one place where we're trying to destress our souls.
?
I have been a member of the unity church, The unitarian church, And the humanists. But nature is my guide. In a 3D world, everything has 3 sides. And yet we think there are two, good & evil. Is Life-and-death and day and night good and evil or equally important.
Similarly, I was raised Unity, attended Unitarian for a while when I moved out on my own, and am generally drawn to humanism, but tend to adhere to direct experience in a living world (i.e., 'nature').
@@MarmaladeINFP This is the first time I was clever enough to figure out how to reply, because of your response, thank you. What is your biggest listen? You've learned recently from life. That surprised you?
Our laws should be based upon nature's. Whether political or religious. The love of money is the root of evil sure shows up in our political realm.
There is a common morality and that is the rate the prostitute and lover ethics. Which creates a hell, purgatory or paradise on earth, Free will and freedom allows us to choose. We are not robots.
We are 3 persons and one, physical intellectual and emotional beings or body-mind and spirit.. Emotions provide the energy promotion it animates us and motivates us and creates all our values. Yet it is as unseen as the air, That is everywhere and essential. So sayeth I, I don't know what others say, but I'm willing to have it disproved if you would like to.
Great point about the cost to society of removing faith/religion from contemporary civic life in the United States. Here in Israel, we’ve retained a place for faith in civic life, though it is hardly universally accepted. Nevertheless, America might benefit from a loosening up of the separation between church and state. Hopefully it will not lead to the kind of Christian nationalism some are calling for.
Can you elaborate re: the ways that you feel faith is active in civic life?
@@born2bwildne744 - As I mentioned, I live in Israel, which is what I am referring to. Though we don't have a constitution that demands a wall between church and state.
@@szeevster5767 that does not really address my request for elaboration.
@@born2bwildne744 - I’m not sure what you’re looking for. But as I have already said, there’s no division between church and state here. Religious and secular (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) schools are available to all. Public transportation is not allowed on the Jewish sabbath in many cities, etc. Better?
@@szeevster5767 public transportation is not available on the sabbath in many cities? So regardless of one’s faith, public transportation isn’t working in many cities on Saturdays? Isn’t that government favoring one faith versus all others? How do you think that helps Israeli society/civic life?
Here is USA, we have different types of schools too, including of various religions and denominations.
Doesn’t the Israeli Constitution define Israel as a Jewish state? The USA Constitution is silent on religion - we do not build a religious nor ethnic definition into our Constitution.
How does the Israeli public education system address non-Jewish students? Are educational opportunities and support equalized across all religious and ethnic students?
The Native American peoples of this country have always regarded the natural world as THE creation of an ultimate creator/creators. Europeans arrived here in awe of the responsible stewardship of this land.
Be honest with yourself-- all religions were invented by humans for power and social cohesion
If you want to know the history of American religion, you'd also need to include the background of the English Civil War that shaped the original colonies and inspired the American Revolution. You'd likewise need to include the religious dissenters of Europe: German Pietists, French Huguenots, etc. As for the founding generation, besides the Unitarians and Universalists, we can't forget the influential Deists like Thomas Paine.
But even as far back as the colonial period, we have to recall that evangelicals and free baptists were amont the most socially and politically radical: pro-democrats, proto-feminists, abolitionists, secularists, etc. Consider Roger Williams 'democratical' government in colonial Rhode Island that promoted separation of church and state.
There were many strains that fed into the Transcendentalism of Emerson and others, including Theosophists who translated and published many Eastern texts. From Thomas Jefferson to Henry David Thoreau, many early American thinkers read widely: the Koran, Bhagavadgita, etc. Native American ideas were also familiar to early Americans when many tribes were not yet put on reservations.
No one describes spirit, and when they try they fail.
LOL we need a laugh reaction
I have been--and continue to be-- immeasurably enriched-- by my Christian faith. I am also saddened that the Christian faith is so often misunderstood and misused. For one thing, it is fine to look for God but most folks don't understand that God is continually looking for us because he created us, he has redeemed us, and he sustains us, collectively as well as individually. He loves us. I am not big on microphones myself, but as the woman at the well said to her friends, Come and see. Yes, we have been Evangelicals since 1457 (but modern usage is not the original). The Bible is a gift that God has given us, so we can look through a window and see what he is like. It is a lifetime journey. I am also a Bonhoeffer fan, as well as an Episcopalian and a Moravian.
Pope John said "There are many paths that lead to God's kingdom".
Great new haircut Ken
The motivation to include Separation of Church and State in the Constitution was primarily to protect the State from the Church, not the other way around. Normally the church doesn’t need protecting if it’s kept out of the government. Religion has always been the biggest threat to freedom of religion.
It was both. Many came here to practice religions that did need protection from the State
@@elizabethhopkins7582I don’t think it was the secular part of the state the churches needed protection from. They needed protection from the majority church that had infiltrated the state. That’s why I say, religious freedom is only threatened by other religions or denominations.
Deists believed in a clockwork God that created the universe and then stepped back.
What is "shared experience"?
Which experiences do we share?
Is everybody's experience everybody else's experience?
2
How touching it is, the woman has a book on her sofa called "Love".
Why don't these to try swallowing the King James Bible whole. Then they may be able to move from superficial nonsense to the real thing.
Who was Jesus?
The Son of God.
This one backs this up! ruclips.net/user/shortsnuT4sjR7bD4
Nature can be brutal and unforgiving to the weak.
I consider myself a spiritual person, but I do not subscribe to any particular religion or theology, although they all seem to contain remnants of truth. I describe myself as a seeker--of truth and of the Divine (the Whole). But there is no knowing that Divine in this life, no matter how we try to frame it, name it, reduce it, personify it, or suffocate it within the pages of one of our so-called "sacred texts." After all, once one claims to know God (a useful but reductionist metaphor for the Divine), all thinking and seeking perish and the human soul becomes ossified.
Evangelicals are fair game for Politions a lot of money there.One vote for soul the devils bargain.😢
Separation of church and state was developed because of how and who ruled the European crown heads and powers during the previous centuries.
In the mid 1770s the Empire thar ruled Europe was recent history.
Their parents had seen and survived governments ruled by the church. They wanted no government ruled by a church, which resulted in persecution.
They wanted no church to interfere with government, which resulted in no rule of law.
Christian Nationalism endorses BOTH of these evils.
It erases the gains since the days of Huss and Martin Luther.
I dig you guys, there is no god!
The "religious" failed themselves... Using Creator as a wepaon will do that...
How are his couch and chair so white?😮
Lighting and video.
Religion isn’t necessarily spiritual, spirituality isn’t a religion. 🩵🫶🏽✌🏽🫶🏽🩵
Nature is life outpictured, we are of Nature. I grew up in the redwoods of northern California. The feel of it remains inside me. A wholly spiritual place.
Stillness is powerful.
I like the discussion, but Ken Burns makes a mistake around 6:05 of saying that many of the American Founders were deists and did not believe in God actively caring for the people he had created in his own Image. This is false. There were very few deists among the American Founders as we define the term today as Ken did here. While there were more Christians who relied on reasoning to the theological and philosophical truth, I am aware of only Tom Paine being a deist in the sense that Ken referred to and who was hostile to Christianity. In contrast, Jefferson though a very rationalistic and materialist Christian was never an atheist or a deist. Jefferson explicitly embraced God's Providence in the Declaration of Independence. For a time when he was younger, he did rebel against Christianity but he said that he never disbelieved in traditional concepts of God nor the standard arguments for God's existence. There were American flags that stated "An Appeal to God" or "An Appeal to Heaven." A crucial lead up to the War for Independence was the Great Awakening that undermined the authority of the clergy and establishment order with an emphasis on traditional Protestant theology forming the basis of individual relationships with a personalistic God. See the link below to the Library of Congress website on Religion and the American Founding.
The doctrine of freedom of religion and not establishing a particular church was never to marginalize Christianity or to remove a public dependence on God from America. American understandings of separation never came close to anything like French laicism. In fact, Protestant Christians such as Baptists championed religious liberty in order to maintain Christianity's purity and fervency. John Locke, himself a Christian, argued in his "Letter Concerning Toleration" that each person must search to find the one true religion and then freely embrace that religion for oneself without coercion since sincere faith cannot be coerced. This is the Protestant centrality of sincere faith and a personal relationship with God. That is what animates the First Amendment.
www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html
Deists included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, etc. Also, mostly deist were George Washington and James Monroe, while John Adams was partly deist and partly orthodox. The only major founder who was fully orthodox was Samuel Adams. A large number of the founders didn't believe in communion, confirmation, resurrection, Christ-divinity, Trinity, and miracles (Jim Peterson, "The Revolution of Belief").
Jefferson famously cut up multiple Bibles to eliminate all the miracles and glue back together the parts and versions he liked. Deists believed in a God but it was a God that created but didn't later intervene with miracles. None of that necessarily contradicts faith in a personal God, divine providence, heaven, etc. The main thing is that the Founders, in opposing not only imperialism and monarchism but also theocracy, didn't see religion as political justification.
As Kurt Andersen put it, "When somebody asked Alexander Hamilton why the Framers hadn't mentioned God in the Constitution, his answer was deadpan hilarious: "We forgot."" Of course, they didn't actually forget. Their lack of invoking a deity and religion was consciously and carefully intentional. Having fought for indepence from an empire that had a state religion, they had no interest in re-establishing politicized religiosity.
@@MarmaladeINFP The entire political philosophy undergirding the American constitutional order is Christian in both origin and in substance. Take a look at the Library of Congress online exhibit on Religion and the American Founding, which I provide a link to above. In that you will find a discussion of deism, which is deemed a marginal influence on the founding. Tom Paine and Ethan Allen were not typical in their views at the time. Also, the founding generation relied on the Bible and Christian theorists for justifying the Revolution and the subsequence governance of the new nation ("The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,"
Donald S. Lutz
The American Political Science Review
Vol. 78, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 189-197. ) John Locke was especially influential with all of the Founders referring to him explicitly or implicitly such as Jefferson in the Declaration and Hamilton in his "The Farmer Refuted," where he openly appeals to God and natural rights. Locke wrote from an openly Christian perspective in his defense of of natural rights based in natural law as endowments from God. Locke on just about every page of his political writings refers to God or to the Bible as did the Founders. Just read *Second Treatise on Civil Government* and for a Christian defense of religious liberty, read his "Letter Concerning Toleration." Locke, the early Baptists such as Roger Williams nor the Framers of the First Amendment sought to marginalize religion. Our entire legal and political system is based on these Christian principles. In practical terms, even deists and unitarians such as Jefferson and Adams who identified as Christians worked from the same natural law foundation as orthodox trinitarian Christians. All of the Founders linked virtue with liberty and saw religion as foundational in theory and in practice to ethical, self-controlled behavior. Consider here Washington's Farewell Address and such comments as these from John Adams ""Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Consider the origins of constitutionalism dating back to the early documents of the Pilgrims and Massachusetts Bay colony. They were explicitly Christian replete with biblical references. The U.S. Constitution is drawn from these early documents from a number of colonies especially Massachusetts. If you look at the first state constitution of Massachusetts, it is very similar to the U.S. Constitution. Political scientist Donald Lutz's historical and philosophical account of the Constitution finds that the notion of a covenant and then a compact based in the governance of Protestant religious sects dating back to the late 16th and early 17th Centuries is the origin of our Constitution. See his *The Origins of American Constitutionalism.* Also see Princeton historian Perez Zagorin's tracing religious toleration to Christian theology in his *How The Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.*
The vast majority of the American colonists who founded the U.S. were orthodox Christians as were most of the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution. All of them valued the public role for religion and traditional morality.
America started at zero? Good conversation, but no, it did not. The settlers came here to an extremely rich culture, hundreds of cultures that had learned to work with nature in an extraordinary way. Every Native person in America had something extraordinary to offer, but all that was nearly completely annihilated. White settlers tripped over themselves to learn nothing from the cultures that were here and to impose their own, which was far far more limited. That was the foundation of what we have now, which is not sustainable.
We're back to our divine selves. For 2 thousand years middleMEN kept themselves in between us and our divine selves. No more need for middleMEN. No more need for religious institutions where we hear about a god created by MEN who pretend that the divine created us in her/his image. What a root. How long have they fooled us.
Half way through, and these dear people have said essentially nothing.
These is not nearly as objectionable as so many people who would have said something _bad_ in the same time.
Not so impressed. Remember Ellis Island, In NYC? All those Italians and Irish people unloading here. And then up to I think it was 1963. The federal government, probably with the support of Franklin and Eleanor, supported all the "Parochial Schools" ~. You know. Catholic. Not a bad thing. Those big brick buildings, the Franciscan Nuns, the Jesuit priests. Educated this country and set the scene for the incredible response to the Nazi fascism of WWII. It's all about being Catholic. Those Irish and Italian immigrants. The heart and soul of this country. Course now it is the Latino culture. You don't know how the Latino culture is the glue that is holding this country together. All good. ~ On and on and on.
Many fascist regimes in various countries were led by Catholics. There were Nazi Catholics in Germany, and many German-American Catholics supported the Nazis.
What a bunch of nonsense. Jesus said " I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me" .. its not religion its relationship with JESUS. Your take on Derrick Bohnhoffer is so far off its scary. Go watch the documentary on him. He loved Jesus and made him LORD over everything to the point of praying to God for every earthly good. Seek the true in Jesus and read his love letter. We are all sinners who need a savior. He is available.
Your comment is the only one I've read here that points to the truth of the Gospel. God bless you for your insight and your boldness.
"My beliefs aren't religion, they're the TRUTH."
The most terrifying statement made by men.
Will we ever escape?
Ugh, word salad from two people who clearly aren't wondering how to pay the rent.
Ken Burns is a great American when it comes to his documentaries. However, when he ventures into religion and especially when he enters into politics he's an embarrassment.
This happens to other artists as well. I guess the old adage "trust the art , not the artist " is what we're left with.
Joke!!!
Throughout this video the speakers imply that all good virtues, values or morals come from religion or a belief in god or faith. One does not have to believe in god to be virtuous. I find it very arrogant and one sided discussion