(BOISE – AP & KLEW Staff) –

A group known as the “Keep the Commandments Coalition” is asking Boise Mayor Dave Bieter to return a Ten Commandments monument to Julia Davis Park – if the U.S. Supreme Court okays religious displays in public places in a forthcoming case.

Hmm, a public park maintained by taxpayer funds would be supporting a graven image to a Judeo-Christian scripture (Exodus 20:2-17). Gee, why would any patriotic American have a problem with that?*

We should go even farther. We should have a decorative sculpture in the form of a scroll with Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”) engraved upon it placed in all public health clinics. After all, this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian heritage, and a majority of the American public is against homosexuality. Maybe when the sodomites come in for their AIDS treatments they’ll understand the depth of God’s love and Christian tolerance.

Why stop there? Let’s get a similar inscription of Proverbs 22:15 (“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”), Proverbs 13:24 (“He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”), and Proverbs 23:13 (“Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.”)** posted at all the Health & Welfare offices. All those baby-spittin’ welfare moms could then learn how God wants them to keep their rugrats in line by beating them with a stick.

Oh, sure, the heathens will probably complain about this. You know, the Muslims, Hindi, Buddhists, Sikhs, Juche, Jews, Baha’i, Jain, Shinto, Cao Dai, Zoroastrians, Tenrikyo, Neo-Pagans, Unitarian-Universalists, Rastafarians, Scientologists, Wiccans, Druids, Spiritualists, Eckankars, Satanists, and those damn dirt-worshipping aboriginal religions. Not to mention the atheists, agnostics, Deists, Pantheists, Transcendentalists, Universists, and secular humanists. They’ll want their Scriptures placed up on monuments in public places, too (though I’m not exactly sure what those Scriptures would be).

Of course, that’s easy enough to dispel; this country wasn’t founded by Buddhists or Muslims, it was founded by Christians***. If they don’t like it, they can just move back to their own countries (though I’m not sure to which country to send the atheists and agnostics… maybe we should invade someplace and set up the atheist/agnostic/homosexual homeland, Israel-style. Call it “Homoslavia” or “Atheistan” or something.) Yes, in America we offer you the freedom of religion, just so long as you bow down to the supremacy of the Christianity majority in public. /sarcasm

The Boise City Council voted in January 2004 to remove the monument to avoid lawsuits. It was removed the following March amid demonstrations.

The ton-and-a-half monument was moved to St. Michael’s Episcopal Cathedral across the street from the State Capitol in downtown Boise.

Where it belongs! What is it with the Christians these days? They make up one-third of the world’s adherents (2.1 billion) and 76.5% of the United States, yet they pitch a fit as if they were being rounded up into ghettoes and concentration camps! The birth of their savior is a friggin’ federal holiday! They’ve got bookstores in every strip mall, six television networks, damn near every receivable AM radio station in “fly-over” country that doesn’t play country, their holy book in every motel room, their deity on our money, prayers before official government functions by a federally-paid chaplain, innumerable references in popular culture, a church every three square miles, bleeps to every vain reference to their deity on broadcast TV, and they’ve even had a 5% increase in their numbers from 1990-2000.

Furthermore, it’s not as if they’ve got every freedom to speak, worship, and display their religious iconography anyhow and anywhere they please, so long as it’s not the government that’s doing the speaking and displaying for them. The entire city of Boise sits beneath a bluff called Table Rock, upon which is a giant 30′ lighted cross erected on private land. At night there is virtually no place in Boise where you cannot see this cross. Everywhere you drive in the county, you’re likely to see the “John 3:16” signs and the little crosses posted where driving accidents have occurred. The freeway between Canyon and Ada counties posts the giant lighted billboards of two different churches warning us of the wages of sin and the abomination of Adam and Steve. Every third car boasts a Jesus (ΙΧΘΥΣ) fish, Cartoon Calvin kneeling before a cross, or some other religious bumper sticker.

The only thing we — or the Constitution — asks is that government remain neutral in matters of religion, neither endorsing nor prohibiting any faith. Can’t there be just one cultural space devoid of Christianity? Is it too much to ask that they keep their Jesus to themselves at least some of the time? Is it too much to ask that I can go to a public park without being preached to? Not every American taxpayer is Christian, you know, and the money they pay taxes with only says “In God We Trust” thanks to the McCarthy communist witch hunts of the 1950’s.

Public parks are not for worship!

* Note for the sarcasm-impaired: yes, I really do mean it. And I think we should stomp stray kittens to death, execute all people over the age of 70, and institute the death penalty for parking violations.

** Keep in mind that in each verse, the word “rod” in Hebrew means “stick or branch from a tree.”

*** Actually, it was founded by Deists, who were most assuredly not Christian. Learn more about that when you…

Thomas Jefferson

There is no question Jefferson rejected the Bible as divine revelation and rejected the divinity of Jesus. In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson’s appeal was to the God of the Deist, “Nature’s God,” not specifically to the God of Christianity (see letter dated Sep. 14, 1813, to Jefferson from John Adams equating “Nature’s God” with “the revelation from nature”).

As President, Jefferson occasionally attended church services; but, he was not a communing member of any Christian church. Further, he refused to proclaim any national days of prayer or thanksgiving.

Jefferson says he was a “Materialist” (letter to Short, Apr. 13, 1820) and a “Unitarian” (letter to Waterhouse, Jan. 8, 1825). Jefferson rejected the Christian doctrine of the “Trinity” (letter to Derieux, Jul. 25, 1788), as well as the doctrine of an eternal Hell (letter to Van der Kemp, May 1, 1817). Further, Jefferson specifically named Joseph Priestly (English Unitarian who moved to America) and Conyers Middleton (English Deist) and said: “I rest on them … as the basis of my own faith” (letter to Adams, Aug. 22, 1813). Therefore, without using the actual words, Jefferson issued an authentic statement claiming Deism as his faith. The 1971 (ninth edition) Encyclopedia Britannica, 7:183, states the following: “By the end of the 18th century deism had become a dominant religious attitude among upper-class Americans, and the first three presidents of the United States held this conviction, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence.” Therefore, it is appropriate to quote the two following paragraphs from the correspondence of President Thomas Jefferson wherein he wrote specifically about deism, as taught by Jesus.

“In consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the year 1798-99, I had promised some day to write him a letter giving him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected often on it since, & even sketched the outlines in my own mind. I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the antient [ancient] philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an estimate, . . . . I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, & doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state. This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, & even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark . . . that his system of morality was the most benevolent & sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers.” (Ltr. to Joseph Priestly, Apr. 9, 1803.)

Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
“History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.”

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own”

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
“One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And 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.”

Jefferson’s Autobiography
“[A]n amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that [the preamble] should read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

Benjamin Franklin

Franklin began to clarity his religious beliefs through a series of essays and letters. In them, he adopted a creed that would last the rest of his life: a virtuous, morally fortified, and pragmatic version of deism. Unlike most pure deists, he concluded that it was useful (and thus probably correct) to believe that a faith in God should inform our daily actions; but like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma, burning spirituality, deep soul-searching, or a personal relationship to Christ.

In the deist tradition, Franklin’s Supreme Being was somewhat distant and uninvolved in our daily travails. “I imagine it great vanity in me to suppose that the Supremely Perfect does in the least regard such an inconsiderable nothing as man,” he wrote. He added his belief that this “infinite Father” was far above wanting our praise or prayers.

From Franklin’s autobiography:
“Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.”

“…Some books against Deism fell into my hands….It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”

Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: London, 1757 – 1775
“If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.”

James Madison

James Madison’s Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774:
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise”

Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Section 7, 1785:
“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 laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

Ibid, Section 8:
“What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.”

James Madison, introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, Congressional Register, June 8, 1789:
“[The] civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed.”

James Madison, Detached Memoranda, believed to have been written circa 1817.
“The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds and consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics and Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers. or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”

James Madison, letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819
“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.”

James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822:
“I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of Religion from civil jurisdiction, in every case where it does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always been a favorite principle with me; and it was not with my approbation, that the deviation from it took place in Cong[ress], when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the Nat[ional] Treasury. It would have been a much better proof to their Constituents of their pious feeling if the members had contributed for the purpose, a pittance from their own pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done, may be to apply to the Const[itution] the maxim of the law, de minimis non curat.”

George Washington

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, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.

“The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”

Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, “That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.” In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally “denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.” When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of nature.”