jim alison
June 12, 2007, 05:34 AM
IN OUR EMAIL
From : Cristina
Sent : Monday, June 11, 2007 11:03 AM
To : The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
Subject : Best-selling author discusses dismantling of U.S. religious heritage in new book
Mr. Mansfield is open to debating topics covered in his new book – please let me know if there is interest.
All my best,
Cristina
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June 2007
Exactly 60 Years Ago, U.S. Supreme Court Issued Ruling (Everson V. Board Of Education)
That Effectively Destroyed Founding Fathers’ Vision For Religion In America….Says Author/Historian Stephen Mansfield in new book:
TEN TORTURED WORDS:
How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America….
And What’s Happened Since
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” are the first ten words of the Bill of Rights, and, according to author and historian Stephen Mansfield, those words “were a miracle of history: for the first time in human experience, the legislative power of a nation was forbidden from legislating the conscious of man.”
However, in his upcoming book, TEN TORTURED WORDS: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America…. And What’s Happened Since (June 5/Thomas Nelson/ ISBN-13: 978-1-5955-5084-2), Mansfield exposes how the Supreme Court has rejected the design our Founding Fathers created and set in motion the dismantling of our religious heritage.
“Religion flourished for 150 years after the Founding Fathers,” says Mansfield. “There was a national encouragement of faith, the states were allowed to nurture as vibrant a faith as the people wished. The fact that the Supreme Court was not called on to issue a ruling directly related to the separation of church and state until after World War Two shows just how solid the foundation was.”
But, according to TEN TORTURED WORDS, that ruling was a disaster. Everson v. Board of Education, which forbids the federal government from passing laws that aided religion or using any tax money to support religion or religious institutions, has dismantled the heritage our Founding Fathers created. The book shows how this single ruling has led to a culture of secularization including lawsuits to erase religious phrases and symbols from government property such as schools, land, offices, courts and even town squares, how Lyndon Johnson’s amendment to the tax code has completely silenced the political speech of religious, tax-exempt organizations, and how the ruling lead to the rise of radical organizations like The People for the American Way, American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who intimidate local governments and school officials with lawsuits, yet profit financially from their actions.
Other fascinating points in the book:
–The U. S. Constitution does not even mention the words “separation of church and state; they were not even penned until fourteen years after the First Amendment became law.
–Thomas Jefferson, supposedly a non-religious man who wanted a secular America, attended church for years in the United States capitol building.
–The First Amendment was never intended to apply to the states, only the federal government.
–The Supreme Court Justice who wrote the disastrous decision that secularized the First Amendment was a member of the KKK and was so incompetent that one of his fellow Justices suggested he go back to law school.
--Current United States law allows organizations like the ACLU to sue school districts and towns over religious symbols and then have their legal fees paid by the losers if they win the case. This means that for the ACLU, dismantling America’s religious heritage has become a profit-making venture—and all at the expense of school districts, towns and even veterans’ cemeteries.
--Stephen Mansfield writes about “Faith-Based Blackmail” in which the ACLU threatens a school district with a lawsuit and the school district caves in because they can’t afford to pay the ACLU’s legal fees if they lose. This has meant that Bible studies and even the Boy Scouts have been driven from public property without a fight—all because of the ACLU’s “Faith-Based Blackmail.”
--A number of measures are being proposed in Congress today to try to restore the Founding Fathers’ intentions for the First Amendment. One such measure, the Public Expression of Religion Act, has even passed the House of Representatives and is now working its way through the Senate.
In TEN TORTURED WORDS, Mansfield also denotes how a religious awakening is underway in America today, which is forcing a reconsideration of the role of religion in modern American society and will surely play a role in the upcoming 2008 election. “The truth is that the sixty year legacy of the Supreme Court’s Everson decision has tortured the intent of the founding generation, tortured the vital role of religion in a civil society and tortured the emergent faith that now offers an American renaissance.”
He adds, “The present American moment – when a religiously inspired global war, a religiously inspired president, an increasingly religious population and religiously inflamed politics all shape the national experience – seems a perfect moment for the reconsideration of our religious heritage and of the laws that have banished the wisdom of that heritage from our public life.”
Stephen Mansfield is The New York Times best selling author of The Faith of George W. Bush, The Faith of the American Soldier, Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission, and Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill, among other works of history, biography and contemporary culture.
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From : Cristina
Sent : Monday, June 11, 2007 11:03 AM
To : The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
Subject : Best-selling author discusses dismantling of U.S. religious heritage in new book
Mr. Mansfield is open to debating topics covered in his new book – please let me know if there is interest.
All my best,
Cristina
--
---------------------------------------------------------
June 2007
Exactly 60 Years Ago, U.S. Supreme Court Issued Ruling (Everson V. Board Of Education)
That Effectively Destroyed Founding Fathers’ Vision For Religion In America….Says Author/Historian Stephen Mansfield in new book:
TEN TORTURED WORDS:
How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America….
And What’s Happened Since
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” are the first ten words of the Bill of Rights, and, according to author and historian Stephen Mansfield, those words “were a miracle of history: for the first time in human experience, the legislative power of a nation was forbidden from legislating the conscious of man.”
However, in his upcoming book, TEN TORTURED WORDS: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America…. And What’s Happened Since (June 5/Thomas Nelson/ ISBN-13: 978-1-5955-5084-2), Mansfield exposes how the Supreme Court has rejected the design our Founding Fathers created and set in motion the dismantling of our religious heritage.
“Religion flourished for 150 years after the Founding Fathers,” says Mansfield. “There was a national encouragement of faith, the states were allowed to nurture as vibrant a faith as the people wished. The fact that the Supreme Court was not called on to issue a ruling directly related to the separation of church and state until after World War Two shows just how solid the foundation was.”
But, according to TEN TORTURED WORDS, that ruling was a disaster. Everson v. Board of Education, which forbids the federal government from passing laws that aided religion or using any tax money to support religion or religious institutions, has dismantled the heritage our Founding Fathers created. The book shows how this single ruling has led to a culture of secularization including lawsuits to erase religious phrases and symbols from government property such as schools, land, offices, courts and even town squares, how Lyndon Johnson’s amendment to the tax code has completely silenced the political speech of religious, tax-exempt organizations, and how the ruling lead to the rise of radical organizations like The People for the American Way, American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who intimidate local governments and school officials with lawsuits, yet profit financially from their actions.
Other fascinating points in the book:
–The U. S. Constitution does not even mention the words “separation of church and state; they were not even penned until fourteen years after the First Amendment became law.
–Thomas Jefferson, supposedly a non-religious man who wanted a secular America, attended church for years in the United States capitol building.
–The First Amendment was never intended to apply to the states, only the federal government.
–The Supreme Court Justice who wrote the disastrous decision that secularized the First Amendment was a member of the KKK and was so incompetent that one of his fellow Justices suggested he go back to law school.
--Current United States law allows organizations like the ACLU to sue school districts and towns over religious symbols and then have their legal fees paid by the losers if they win the case. This means that for the ACLU, dismantling America’s religious heritage has become a profit-making venture—and all at the expense of school districts, towns and even veterans’ cemeteries.
--Stephen Mansfield writes about “Faith-Based Blackmail” in which the ACLU threatens a school district with a lawsuit and the school district caves in because they can’t afford to pay the ACLU’s legal fees if they lose. This has meant that Bible studies and even the Boy Scouts have been driven from public property without a fight—all because of the ACLU’s “Faith-Based Blackmail.”
--A number of measures are being proposed in Congress today to try to restore the Founding Fathers’ intentions for the First Amendment. One such measure, the Public Expression of Religion Act, has even passed the House of Representatives and is now working its way through the Senate.
In TEN TORTURED WORDS, Mansfield also denotes how a religious awakening is underway in America today, which is forcing a reconsideration of the role of religion in modern American society and will surely play a role in the upcoming 2008 election. “The truth is that the sixty year legacy of the Supreme Court’s Everson decision has tortured the intent of the founding generation, tortured the vital role of religion in a civil society and tortured the emergent faith that now offers an American renaissance.”
He adds, “The present American moment – when a religiously inspired global war, a religiously inspired president, an increasingly religious population and religiously inflamed politics all shape the national experience – seems a perfect moment for the reconsideration of our religious heritage and of the laws that have banished the wisdom of that heritage from our public life.”
Stephen Mansfield is The New York Times best selling author of The Faith of George W. Bush, The Faith of the American Soldier, Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission, and Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill, among other works of history, biography and contemporary culture.
# # # #