You might think that I am talking personally about the fact that we moved every two years when I was growing up; but in fact, my thoughts this morning are on the political scene here in the United States. The Nation was founded on the principle of separation of Church and State, but it seems that a minority of citizens are misreading history. My childhood was spent under the Queen and the Church of England until we moved first to Canada (still under the Queen) and then finally to the States (no Queen and no State religion). That was in 1958, and honestly I haven’t given much thought to that separation until recently.
Now I am immersed in the dilemma currently facing the country, and I have started the amazing book by Katherine Stewart with the rather ominous title Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. I had to rush out and buy it as I mentioned in my last post because it is so timely. I am already deep into it and have referred to a couple of her footnotes. This is a very scholarly and well-researched book but extremely readable for the lay person like me.
I personally had no idea how organized and widespread the Christian Nationalist Movement has been for many years. And I certainly did not know that so many churches had taken as their mission the political future of the country by “requiring” their congregants to register to vote and then to vote the “right” way. I’m also horrified at the push for men’s rights and even deliberate arming of these holy warriors. Women, of course, are strictly vessels for birthing more white babies. Anyway, I have to temper my outrage by focusing on the little pleasures of daily life, which, with the sun pouring in the window and a chicken in my crockpot, a chat with my lover reminds me that life goes on.
Another good reminder arose from a t-shirt of the 200th Anniversary of New London, Connecticut, whose motto is Mare Liberum or Freedom of the Sea. The shirt has 1784-1984 on it, so I suspect I bought it when we celebrated that milestone. I’ve had it displayed on my rocking chair for years and never gave it much thought. But as I wrote a while back about the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, history keeps knocking on my door. Now the history of the founding of America has become distorted so that people are led to believe that it was founded as a Christian Nation. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. The colonists fought to be free of the King and the Church. And the founders were adamant about the Separation of Church and State. Oh, and by the way, the cover of the latest New Yorker has a wonderful painting by Barry Blitt entitled “You’re Fired” depicting the Founding Fathers walking out of the Capitol with their belongings in a cardboard box. I guess they got that generous 15 minutes to get their stuff!
Well, I thought I had segued from politics but as you can tell, it’s impossible to do that right now. I’ll get my coffee (decaf as always) and sit with the Sunday paper for a while. Then perhaps I will continue with Katherine’s book (by the way, I’m impressed how many people with my first name seem to exist—even Henry the Eighth had two wives by that name—although there are many spelling variations).
Deep breath, keep calm, and carry on!
RESIST ALWAYS
TTFN
Hi, Katharine... interesting article. I think one of the biggest myths... all nations seem to have them... is that the early white settlers from England came seeking religious freedom. By the way, I have a long international history like you do... I arrived in New Haven, Connecticut at age 10 in 1960 at a time when the city had lost much of its English heritage and had become a major Irish Catholic center (with plenty of Protestant heritage still in view)... then it became more of an Italian Catholic city... lots of Polish and other settlers... Well, long story short, the original 1638 New Haven was an ultra-Puritan (and puritanical) dive...you can read more at Wikipedia... but my main point is that the puritanical Dissenters did not arrive seeking religious freedom. Rather, they were such an intolerant, violent bunch of Calvinist murderers that they had fled from England after losing the Civil War in teh 1600s... that's a complex story in itself, but the main figure seems to have been Oliver Cromwell... who not only sowed mayhem in England but crossed over to Ireland and massacred countless people...Skipping a lot of bloody history, ultimately the Parliamentarians won the civil war. Cromwell's bunch had assassinated King Charles I in (??1648 I think)...by the early 1670s it was over... King Charles II was Restored (the last Catholic monarch in England)... until the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Parliamentarians brought in William and Mary from Netherlands to replace Charles with a new dynasty of more moderate (Anglican) Protestants... I'm reciting all this from memory...
The Dissenters fled for their lives (not seeking freedom but looking for the next place to start a bloodbath with their dark, insane ideas because I think Jean Calvin was clearly demented.
First they fled to Netherlands, always the most tolerant place... and they were thrown out so they had no place else to go but the Colonies... and that's where they sailed to... not seeking freedom in any real sense but bringing tyranny and horror... massacring Native nations with the help of imported Scottish killers...
Speaking of Scottish, there seems to be a spectrum of Calvinist like religion that extends from the Highlands (where indeed the English did a lot of massacring) down into England... so that you have the High Church (very Catholic looking on the surface) and the Low Church (Anglican but resembles Puritan..no statues, no fancy windows, nada...)
And in New Haven, the three main avenues radiating out from what is now Broadway near the Yale campus are Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell... so named in the 1600s to honor three of the sixty or so Regicides... killers of Charles I. There is a lot of this regicide history buried around the place...
King Charles II I believe tried to salvage the northeastern colonies by creating a special province called New England, with a governor directly responsible to him (Charles). That's how New England came to be...
The English monarchs since 1688 have been German rather than English. When Queen Victoria died in 1902(? or so), she could not pass along the crown to her heirs, being German; but Edward VII was the son of her husband Prince Albert... long story short, under Salic succession laws, Edward could become king as the son of Albert ... in WW One, the Royals had to change their family name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor (after one of their castles) for fear of being tossed out. In fact, Kaiser Wilhelm II was Queen Victoria's oldest and most favorite grandson. Interesting stuff...
Ultimately, for all their faults (many of them slave owners including Washington and Jefferson) the Founders of 1776 managed to instill the best ideas of the Enlightenment (including ancient Roman democracy of the Republic 508 to c31 BCE, another fact hardly known in today's world) in creating a republic that has lasted from 1776 to 2025... and may be gone forever with the arrival of the Slime Pit Trump and his zoo... I hope we can recover & restore out nation asap...So I'm not sure what triggered this long history story but I lived in New Haven, came of age there, and had to learn the whole history... They still had Blue Laws dating to Puritan times when I was there: you cannot lead a lion or a tiger on a leash in public; men and women may not stand or sit within 18 inches of each other in public; no liquor sold on Sundays (which is why many of the winos die from drinking cooking fuel like Sterno on Sundays)...and other crazy stuff. The South still has a lot of that dark religion celebrated in that famous painting of a man and woman with dour faces... he holds a pitchfork and wears a gray hat...actually a humorous dig at Puritanism in the USA.
John T. Cullen JTC Sheep Heil!
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MARA Make America Real Again
My dog has separation anxiety. When we first got him, he would race from window to window as we were leaving. A previous owner had left him alone and he pushed out a window air conditioner and escaped so it took a dog trapper to recover him. I recognized what was happening and after a few weeks, I talked to the vet about it and learned that it's fairly common -- especially rescue dogs who have lost one family along the way. He prescribed clomipramime which, like Prozac, is a Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) which has made a world of difference. He's on about half the original dosage and while he exhibits few symptoms when we leave, he is insanely happy when we return.
As for me, as a preacher's kid in the United Methodist Church all the pastors got their assignments for the next year at the annual conference. In the old days, as described in One Foot in Heaven, they often brought road maps to conference to find out where they would be going. We didn't have it that bad although we moved when I was 3 month old, 6 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old and that was to a position on the Board of Missions which was a bit more secure.