I hope that I am not accused of Mormon-bashing or any other sleight for publishing this diary. It is a partial reconstruct of of a diary that I wrote 4 years ago. As a former Mormon and 3rd cousin to Mitt Romney it is my intent to inform the DKOS community of the extremism and secrecy that has plagued the Mormon Church from it's inception. The secrecy of Mitt Romney and his dog whistles to the religious right on religion is misleading at best and downright misinformed by choice or lying at worst.
Speaking at the George Bush Presidential Library on 6th December 2007; Gov. Mitt Romney addressed the American people about his views on religious liberty, our country's grand tradition of religious tolerance and how faith would inform his presidency. It laid the cornerstone to win the Presidency and signal to the religious right of their common belief in a Christianist America.
It is a cause for great concern.
Read more: http://www.wcvb.com/...
" Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."
Oh really?
Romney continues:
"They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.
The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation "under God" and in God, we do indeed trust."
Let's see what the founding fathers had to say.
George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From:
George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers
'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"
It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
From:
The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.
Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"
I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
From:
Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to J. Adams April 11,1823)
James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense.
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
From:
The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.
Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble."
He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From:
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790.
While religion and faith are no doubt major factors of American political life, the current trend of Christian Nationalism to revise and distort the historical context of constitutional liberties from the Founding Fathers is as enticing if not more so for the Mormons; as it is for religionists anywhere in America.
Mormons are adamant about their belief from the Book of Mormon that America was founded by Columbus through the medium of the Holy Ghost; that the founding fathers were inspired by God and the Holy Ghost to write the constitution so that the Gospel (Mormonism) could be restored to the earth and prepare for the second coming of Christ. The direct words of the Founders do not seem overly influenced by the Holy Ghost to me.
Additionally, Mormons are completely engaged in this Romney candidacy through a prophecy of Joseph Smith in 1840. Mormon folklore has kept it alive with the hope that their time has finally arrived in spite of all the diversity propaganda that the church is spewing.
Even this nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground, and when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin, this people (Mormons) will be the staff upon which the nation shall lean, and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.
(Source: Joseph Smith Collection, LDS Church Historical Department. Joseph Smith on July 19, 1840.)
It is quite a radical and unknown concept and rallying cry that is whispered and shared throughout Mormondom that this prophecy will be fulfilled by none other than my cousin Mitt.
I find it imperative to uphold the construct of our current constitution by electing great Democrats who will continue our proud heritage of equality for all; that were so sorely lacking 182 years ago. Minorities, women, laborers, retirees,entreprenuers and immigrants depend on the promise and success of a strong Democratic Party.