WELCOME TO STOP THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT .ORG THIS IS HISTORY WITH A PUNCH~!!
Research and writing by James Veverka
On
March 2,
1819, more than thirty years after leading the way in drafting
and framing the United States Constitution, James Madison's wrote to Robert
Walsh,
"The civil Government, though bereft
of
everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite
stability, and performs its functions with complete success,
whilst the
number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and
the
devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by
the
total separation of the Church from the State."
One of the ways to counter the attack on American
Constitutional principles by the
religious right
is to address their revisionism, misinformation and distortions.
Important also is their psychological motivation which is based in religious zeal.
This site is
an
educational site regarding claims found in the religious right's
propaganda, which, not surprisingly, are not founded in
historical,
legal, or scientific facts. An especially profound error is
their spin
on Christian history and Christian principles. The often repeated
claim,
America was founded on Christian principles is seriously
flawed.
They don't seem to know how to separate law from heritage and
tradition.
They have invented an unwritten constitution which they prefer over the real
one. Their tactic is to cherry pick the quotes that fit their agenda. While anyone
can pick quotes from American founders, none of them are the law. Many do
not realize that the people who attended the Constitutional Convention were not
of one mind regarding religious matters. They were a diverse bunch and some were
not friends at all. So choosing quotes has its problems. The best quotes to cite
are ones that reflect the content of the Constitution itself.
The
deception may be
deliberate among the most fanatical, issuing from a messianic
obsession
to evangelize at any cost in order to save and control the world.
America's sage,
Thomas Jefferson spoke against these people wanting to shove their
religion
down people's throats by the loathsome alliance of
church
and state. (See Jefferson and Madison church-state separation quotation
page)
"Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of
church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves
the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress
as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds." Letter
to Charles Clay, January 29, 1815
"That but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish
religion before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his
special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing
their oppressors in church and state: that the purest system of morals ever before
preached to man has been adulterated and sophisticated, by artificial constructions,
into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves, that rational men
not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down
their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are
the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and
do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ." Letter to William Baldwin, January 19, 1810
The theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in
religious intolerance. Religious exclusivity is a principle found in
both the Bible and the Quran. The United States Constitution
embraces principles of liberty that would have been considered
heresy by
Christian leaders of Massachusetts. In the General Councils of
the past
that shaped church doctrine and civil law, the decree would be Let them be
anathemized, a popular decree of condemnation. Biblically
based
religious intolerance was codified in Massachusetts. Indeed,
that
America was founded on Biblical principles; specificly
principles
of religious intolerance made painfully clear in their laws. Similar to Islamism,
it was the Puritan's
Christianism - or else. Those are certainly principles
that are firmly grounded in the Bible's intolerance
and have
been expressed throughout Christian history by people that took the demands of the Bible quite seriously.
Nothing else
is
acceptable. Reading both the Bible and Christian history shows
us that
liberties of religion, speech, assembly and the literature are
clearly not
Christian principles. The same is true of Islam. Differing ideas
are
forbidden so speaking or writing them has always led to
persecution and
much of the time, horrific violence. Modern principles of liberty are humanist
principles that arose in opposition to
injustice of
Biblical and ecclesiatical decrees. Tolerance, acceptance, democracy and
liberty are
not the justice ethics found in the Bible. For more on the
Bible, the Commandments and
the Constitution, see my Evolution
of
American Constitution Framing: 1610-1797. This article
also
shows the battle between the old legal order's Patrick
Henry, a
member of that period's religious right. Henry sought to have
the
Virginia government financially support Christian teachings just as
they did
in Europe and England. The winners were the lawmakers in the
Jefferson-Madison alliance that sought to separate religion and
government. Unlike Henry and his allies, they had learned the lessons of
history.
Separationists won that battle in 1786 with the passage of the
Virginia
Statute on Religious Liberty, of which parts became the model
for the US
Constitution's 6th Article and 1st Amendment.
Madison treated Henry's bill on the floor of the Virginia legislature this way:
"Because the proposed establishment is a departure from the generous policy, which,
offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a
lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy
mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted,
it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those
whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it
may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one
is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.
Leaders and especially followers of the right have difficulty
differentiating
between religious ethics with liberty ethics. The ethics of
liberty are ethics of fairness, acceptance and tolerance. They embrace and respect the circumstances of
a pluralist world with its myriad worldviews. The Bible opposes tolerance in many spheres of life,
especially religious
tolerance. The sexual politics of the Bible are also vicious and given
to violence. The Bible is so complete in it's doctrine of religious and sexual
intolerance that no matter
which Christian sect was in power over the centuries, they
persecuted everyone else. Be they Arianists,
Monophysites,
Nicene 'Catholics'of Rome or Byzantine, Donatists, Lutherans,
or Calvinist Puritans;
they
were all extremely intolerant of other religious beliefs and used
the state whenever possible in order to gain control.
What
Catholic emperors Theodosius and Justinian did to those they deemed heretics, so did the Arianist
Christians and Protestant Christians.
Although overlapping in some areas, liberty ethics and values
are not
always the same as religious ones. No sensible person needs religion to know
that lying, stealing, cheating or destroying other people's property is wrong.
Empathy is biologically inborn in all but a
few and it is where moral principles are anchored. Religions try to convey what they
think is moral but they distort the representation of the human moral sense with dogmatic
authoritarian supernaturalism.
Sometimes the principles of liberty and religion are polar opposites. An example is comparing
the First Commandment with the the First Amendment. Part of Christianity's
decline in the United States is due in
part to more liberal Christians embracing humanist values of
tolerance and acceptance.
In the present United States, less than 10% consider themselves
evangelicals and more than half of the 77% of Americans that identify as
Christians are nominals who reject a literal reading of the Bible. They cherry pick their morality based on common sense. Morality based on common sense is a cafeteria affair. With freedom of conscience, we do get to choose which makes sense to us.) This 77% figure is a monumental shift away from the days before the ratification of the US Constitution when some constitutions made evangelism the law of the land. Over the centuries, critical
thinking and education have increased the
numbers of liberal Christian humanists, deists, skeptics and unbelievers.
For more statistics on the changing religious identification of the US, see my page
on surveys by the Christian evangelical organization BARNA and the American
Religious Identification Survey (ARIS2001) of 50,281 households in 2001.
We are seeing more splintering right now as Anglicans and Episcopalians reject the intolerant nature of the Bible
regarding sexual orientation. They refuse to take the Bible's condemnation of
homosexuality seriously because they deem it
unjust, unAmerican and unscientific. They have chosen reason and justice over blind faith in the
literal reading of
the Bible. The same has happened with divorce because the issues surrounding marriage
and divorce are not as simple mindedly black and white as the literalist voices of the Bible and the Quran claim.
Nobody in their right mind can take Jesus' statement that if one divorces on grounds that don't deal with
unchastity and then remarries, they have committed adultery. That's a ridiculous and immature notion
that only the most diehard conservatives take seriously.
A few years ago the Texas Baptists split from the Southern
Baptist Convention due to its position insisting on women being submissive to their
husbands. The Southern Baptists have also recently condemned some
Baptist colleges who are also rejecting the homophobia of the Bible by allowing Gay-Straight Alliance clubs.
In fact, the number of churches who accept gays and
lesbians is growing steadily while the religious fundamentalists are losing ground in the culture wars. Like the
fundamentalists of Iran, they are very loud but are still a small minority.
People are realizing that Christian fundamentalists are very similar to Islamic fundamentalists
in their aims regarding religion, sexuality, science and secularism. To his credit, I once heard Bill O'Reilly
attack a Christian fundamentalist as being no different than the Muslim brand. While he may be wrong on a
great deal of things, one must give credit where credit is due. He was right on the mark.
Several Baptist Colleges have also rejected the strict anti-gay policies of the
Southern Baptist Convention. Groups like The Promise Keepers also embrace
a biblically accurate submissive role for women in
society. This is much like a Muslim marriage. Recently, a high ranking official of the
Christian Coalition was forced out because he wanted to pay more attention to social justice and
environmental issues. Imagine that!
They could not bear someone who was not strident and fanaticly focused on abortion,
same-sex marriage, creationism and stem cell research.
Walk into any self proclaimed Full Gospel church and you will
see, as is done in Islam, women are taught submissive roles in society.
Splits aren't new regarding matters of justice in America. The Methodist and Baptist Churches
also split over slavery; the northern liberal churches choosing humanist values of justice and compassion
and the southern conservatives choosing biblically accurate slaveholding. In 1836,
the Methodist-Episcopal Church held its annual council Council in Georgia. The following
exerpts are from James G Birney's 1840 book, The American Churches: The Bulwarks of Slavery:
At the Georgia Annual Conference it was Resolved unanimously that:—
"Whereas, there is a clause in the discipline of our church, which states that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of slavery; and whereas the said clause has been perverted by some, and used in such a manner as to produce the impression that the Methodist Episcopal church believed slavery to be a moral evil,"
Therefore Resolved,—
"That it is the sense of the Georgia Annual Conference, that slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil."
Resolved,—
"That we view slavery as a civil and domestic institution, and one with which, as [demonized, vile individuals as distinct from] ministers of Christ, we have nothing to do, further than to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, by endeavoring to impart to him and his [demonized] master the benign influences of the religion of Christ, and aiding both on their way to heaven."
On the motion, it was Resolved unanimously
"That the Georgia Annual Conference regard with feelings of profound respect and approbation, the dignified course pursued by our several superintendents or bishops in suppressing the attempts that have been made by various individuals to get up and protract an excitement in the churches and country on the subject of abolitionism."
Anti-abolitionist Reverend James H. Thornwell claimed that those who supported abolition of slavery were,
in his own words regarding who the abolitionists were, (Cited in Eugene D.Genovese, "Religion in the Collapse of the American Union", 1998, page 80): "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake"
As you can see, the narrowminded nature of the religious right has not changed much since then. If you don't side with the politics of conservative religion, you're an atheist or a communist at least. It was the
same kind of story with the suffrage movement, too: Conservative Biblical
literalists vs religious and secular humanists who knew the Bible was
bankrupt regarding the issue. Again, it is and was Christian values of
intolerance, discrimination and inequality at odds with the principles of
liberty found in our Constitution. It legally ended fifteen hundred years of authoritarian church state alliances
based on this commandment below. In the Suffrage
essay, I will show you an 1850 NY newspaper article that attacks as unBiblical the idea
of making the races and sexes equal, complaining that these socialists and
infidels are rejecting the social order of the Bible which, according to the
newspaper's editors, has worked well. Women could not vote and Blacks were
slaves and they said it worked well.
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME!
American law is based on the Ten Commandments? If there was ever a statement that went against the principles and guarantees of the Constitution, that's it. Comparing
the First commandment with the First Amendment is a clear example of
colliding values. As And Religious radicals STILL tell us that our laws are based on
the commandments. In fact, our first and amendment makes the first and
second commandments unconstitutional as laws. That goes for the commandments on graven images, the Sabbath and using the Lord's name in vain. All unlawful and thoroughly unconstitutional.
Why evangelical activists make such an irrational and possibly dishonest claim
is at the heart of their agenda to proselytize at any cost. Is it a blindness?
They are much like radical Muslims who also rage at secularism and demand
governments of God.
Adding that unbelief is a capital offense
(stoning) or one deserving eternal torment in the Bible only makes the
distinction clearer. The 6th article's 3rd clause makes one'e religion
constitutionally irrelevant as a value for public service by banning religious
tests, which required Christian declarations of faith.
Clause 3: The Senators and Representatives before
mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and
judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States,
shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but
no religious tests shall ever be required as a Qualification to
any Office or public Trust under the United States."
It revoked the long established Christian
(and Islamic) principle (no other religion tolerated) of religious
tests and declarations. This religious test ban impairs
the Christian goal of making all confess to Christianity by
excluding the requirements of test and declaration in oaths for public office.
In fact, the 6th Article and the 1st Amendment neutralizes the 1st
and the 2nd commandments as the foundation of any laws, which they were
in the old order. The Constitution marked the end of an age; a new
dispensation of liberty had arrived to replace the old era. A new order for
the ages. What did they mean by that bold motto? A bold break from the
legal traditions the past. The government was now religion-neutral, no
longer based on any religious faith, and a protector of all religious
liberty. Legally, no religion was second class anymore as Christians usually
demand, then and now.
With the ratification of the Constitution, unlike the period
with Christian traditions of religious tests for pubic service
(afterall, every tongue shall confess so why not start at the gates of
civil government), no person could be excluded from public service and
office holding because they weren't of a required religious
persuasion. It was now against the law to require any religious faith for
oaths of office yet the religious right makes such religious declarations
a requirement for civic worthiness; precisely the attitude the founders
were countering in Clause 3 of Article 6. No Religious Test - Your religion is
your own matter; what we are concerned about in an
oath is guarding THIS code of laws. Not that one. Article 6, Clause 1
says there is no higher law. It is "the supreme law of the land". The oath is to
that highest law. What the Christian reconstructionists fail to
see is that there is a difference between heritage and law. Religious
tests were tradition and they were law. After the ratification, this
tradition was now unconstitutional. It took until 1824 and 1836 before the
last states (CT & MA) made their transition to constitutional
adherence by legally dis-establishing religion and ending specific Christian religious tests.
Adams and Jefferson were gleeful regarding the end of the "Protestant
Popery" in Connecticut. It took until 1961 to end the use of religious tests that affirmed
the existence of a God. That was a USSC decision regarding the Maryland
Constitutions religious test. It was a representative of the old order; of church
and state alliances.
There are hundreds of laws, considerered tradition and heritage from
the past, that have been ruled unconstitutional. It is a
necessary adjustment over time after the ratifcation of the Constitution.
Things weren't automatic. Becoming a nation of new political orders and
conventions takes time. Old laws and unconstitutional convention
didn't disappear over night. They had to be rooted out, and with a bitter
fight at times. Violence was par in many liberty expansions. It took more than seven
decades for slavery to end and it resulted from a Civil War and then an
Amendment to the Constitution. It took
even longer, 120, for women's suffrage. It took 170 years
before the USSC ruled that laws banning the marriage of interracial couples
were wrong. And who was there to fight liberty?
Religious conservatives every time. Who blew up churches and murdered activists during
the Civil Rights movement? Traditionalists touting the Bible and shouting God's
intention to keep the races separate.
And there have been important court rulings that keep the government out of
our bedrooms, our ideologies, our literature, and our doctor's
office. The Christian religious right, like radical
Islamists, wants into your bedroom, into your love life, into
your reading room, into your bloodstream, and into your doctors
office. Who fought the stablishment of family planning clinics and the right to
purchase and use contraception? The religious right.
They want a big say in your private life. Its their God given responsibility to intrude into
you life.They are the ones there to oppose the
expansion of liberty because that means a freer and more diverse
society. They want uniformity, not diversity. Pluralism is a dirty word even
though the First Amendment gurantees a pluralist nation. Whether it is
immmigration or other religions, they seethe with open hostility towards the
concepts of diversity protected in the Constitution
They are not religious humanists; they are authoritarian totalists. The expansion of
liberty means the end of some customs. So did
the Industrial Revolution and the liberty to shop on Sundays signalled the end
of some customs but we survived all the changes.
Part of the foundation of Christianity's long history of religious
intolerance is the so-called Great Commission It
leaves no room for religious diversity, anywhere.
Matthew 28:19-20. "Therefore go and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I
am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Philippians 2:10-11: "..every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and
things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord...
Those rather imperial statements aren't a recipe for
religious tolerance in a world of free conscience and
diversity, which is a basic ingredient in a free world. God's words in the
Pentatuech's made wrong belief and unbelief capital offenses. The Bible teaches
religious intolerance from cover to cover. Pagans had lived in a culture of
religious diversity and tolerance before Christians
came along and claimed their religion the only legitimate religion on
Earth. Much as Islamists have always done. Christians were then called atheists
because they denied the existence of the gods. A few emperors saw Christanity as
uncivil and dangerous to Roman social order, which rested partly on a foundation
of religious diversity. Religious coexistence was just as necessary for public
order then as it is now. It worked then, too. It was Christianity that brought
religious wars to Europe. People did not fight over religion until they were told
hat they had to believe. Thankfully, we are now back to the paganish world
of religious diversity and codified tolerance that Christians wiped
out in the fourth through sixth centuries.
Believers are charged with converting people, not being supporters of diversity
and true religious liberty. The commission makes it clear: All Nations. Religious
intolerance becomes a virtue. Respecting other religious beliefs as equals is
antithetical to the Biblical charge to evangelize and convert. The free world's
ethic of 'live and let live' is virtually nonexistent in the Bible (and the Quran).
The commission is obsessed with control and the making of a uniform authoritarian
religious collectivism. It is all about conformity and uniformity in a uniformly
Christian society and much like any collectivist vision.But has it ever worked?
No, never, as far as the principles of liberty go. The conservative forces of
Christianity, those that think the Bible is the inerrant and literal Word of God,
whether they are in the laity, the government or the clergy, have fought the
majority of rights movements in western history. Throughout history, canon law,
edicts and diverse alliances of religion and government have opposed many of the
liberties we now take for granted in modern times.
How is it that people say we are founded on Christian 'Biblically correct'
Christianity, like conservative Islam, is clearly intolerant of all other religions,
counting them fraudulent and demonic? The statement is a cultural myth that
perpetuates itself in being oft repeated. 'Memes', ideas taking on their own
lives and evolving, are what we are seeing in action. Our constitution does not
promote any religion and contains no Christian principle. In fact, it takes the
views of classical and enlightenment humanist thinkers on the subjects of rights
of conscience and the separation of powers.
The religious right continually confuses heritage with constitutional
law. Somehow they think tradition gives them the right to use the
state's functions and properties to promote Christianity. This is their 'unwritten
constitution' which is supported by an array of selected quotes and tradition
but not one letter in the United States Constitution. Somehow they think
religious liberty is the liberty to use the state as their evangelical vehicle.
That was never the Constitution's intentions. IWhen Madison wrote the Bill of
Rights with the Constituional Congress, he meant for church and state to be
separate. That is clear in his letters years later. The people of the day knew
what the last fifteen hundred years of Christianity wed to the State had given Europe; that
it is the nature of Christian governments, like any authoritarian regime, to
dominate and be in control of all the people's religion and speech. They are still
with us, the most zealous stopping at nothing to Christianize the world under the
guise of religious liberty, which they clearly don't understand. The US
Constitution prevents that and protects us from those who think
religious liberty is the right to use the time, functions and
property
of the state as a vehicle of evangelism. More than a millenium of experience
proved how fatal that combiunation was. The Constitution's two
religious clauses were crafted with the history of religion and
authoritarianism in mind. Both speak in the negative: NO religious tests; NO law
shall be made regarding religion.
Below are examples of Biblical principles. When incorporated as law, they
represent the antithesis of the principles of religious liberty. So when people
say America was founded on Biblical principles, you can always ask them "oh yea,
which ones?". Don't hold your breath. I have yet to get even the simplest
answer. They just reel off irrelevant quotes and never answer the questions.
Which Christian principles are in the Constitution? Where in the Constitution
are they expressed? They just keep repeating the same mantra, somehow assuming that
saying so ad nauseum makes it so. The Constitution is the USA's foundational law.
Nothing else is. It is the Supreme Law of the Land. It is based on humanist
principles of free conscience and of diversity. The religious right in not bashful
about hating humnanists either. Its like religions who demand that you hate this
world and life. Nothing beforehand counts except on historical, social, and
cultural terms. The religious ideas of the Plymouth Bay Colony were part of the
old legal order and were antithetical to the new order of liberty and government
organization founded in the federal constitution.
Deuteronomy 7:5: But thus shall you deal with
them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and
hew down their Ashe'rim, and burn their graven images with fire.
Deuteronomy 12:3: you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces their
pillars, and burn their Ashe'rim with fire; you shall hew down the graven images
of their gods, and destroy their name out of that place
Up until the ratification of Constitution,
people had to make religious declarations as part of their required oath of office.
One could call them Nicene (Trinitarian) confessions. The US Constitution
outlawed those demanding laws based in the Christian principles of universal
religious declarations intolerance. Our nation, before the ratification, was
nearly as intolerant as England. You had to be a Trinity believing Protestant to serve in government.
Our government's legal foundation is not based in the principles of the old order found
in governments based in Christianity. Those were Medieval conceptions and principles.
THE CONSTITUTION'S SIXTH ARTICLE:
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of
the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States,
shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every state
shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the
Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.
Clause 3: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Justice Joseph Story was very clear regarding the Sixth Article in his 1833 writings on the Constitution when he wrote,
"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off forever every pretense of any alliance between church and state in the national government".
ARTICLE 11 OF THE 1797 TREATY OF
TRIPOLI
"As the government of the United
States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian
Religion -- as it has itself no character of enmity against the law,
religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims]......"
The negotiations of the Treaty of Tripoli began in the Washington Adminstration and it was signed into law by President John Adams:
"Now be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States
of America, having seen and considered the said treaty do, by and within the consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof."
THE CONSTITUTION'S FIRST AMENDMENT:
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances. z
There are no Biblical or Christian principles above.
People of the religious right seem to refuse to see that the establishment clause
is a condition of the free excercise clause. It is much like the conditions
we have on 'free speech', press and assembly. You cant say anything you want,
anywhere you please or anytime you like. There are conditions to rights. There
are responsibilities to freedom. There are social contracts. The humanist
principles of live and let live are imbedded in and trumpeted by the Constitution.
It amazes me what people want to see. Evangelicals can not fathom why
our government is religion-neutral. A little historical education would help a
great deal. Most Christians don't even know the history of their religion. They
don't really understand how it got into power in Europe. They don't understand
how that power was maintained. They have been taught a revisionist history that
serves the evangelical obsession. They have no idea that other
religions and classical ideas were nearly extirpated with threats, violence and the
judicial savagery founded on scripture. Emperor Theodosius the Great even outlawed
the Olympics because they were pagan in origin. He closed and confiscated
the thousand year old Academy in Athens that was founded by Plato. It was
fifteen centuries before they returned after the ruins at Mount Olympus were
discovered by archeologists in the nineteenth century. Read the story
of The Rise of Church-State Alliances 325-565). It is a story very similar to how many twentieth century dictatorships
achieved their rise to power. A story of threats of harm, loss of rights, religious totalitarianism and exclusivity much like the beliefs of today's radical Islamists: by it, it rose to power and by it, it maintained power over the people.
