Donald Trump Jr. Gets Holy Hell Over Bible Fundraiser Video

[Hekate]

29. Well, you do that. Just do a little research into European history & see why America's founders...

… were so keen on keeping “a wall of separation between Church and State.” They were well-educated men, and the history they studied in college was far more recent to their age than to ours.

Let me give you the short version: for century after century after century the soil of Europe had been soaked with the blood of people who’d been deemed “heretics.” The Church spoke with the voice of God and Kings ruled by the grace of God, and different opinions were not tolerated. The sword, the gibbet, the pyre, and very inventive means of torture were all ways of ferreting out heresy, forcing confessions of heresy, and punishing heresy,

When European settlers landed in the New World, they had many motives, but a key one in early days was to be left alone regarding how they saw God, who was a real entity to them. They were not necessarily tolerant of other beliefs themselves, but America afforded them something Europe and the British Isles had not: the ability to leave the vicinity and start their own church. Sometimes they didn’t have to go far; the people who disagreed could just build another church on the other side of town.

America has been good to those kind of rebels and others. America also has been great for people who, based on the fact that they can read the Bible, believe they don’t have to go to a theological seminary and test their ideas against old tradition or even rational thought. They talk straight to God — or Gawd.

Look: go back to first principles as written by Franklin, Jefferson, and the rest and keep government out of religion and religion out of government. Beyond that, ensure that people living in accordance to some religious belief are free to do so as long as they follow the secular laws of the USA that apply to us all equally.

You go mucking about trying to define heresy in regard someone’s religious beliefs, you best do it from inside that religion. You leave the rest of us out of it. There is no “we” in that enterprise. I will stay far, far away — first, because I believe it’s a fool’s errand, and second because I am way outside the majority as regards religion in the US, and it is the First Amendment that protects me.