the issue is your presentism to try to apply the modern approach of non-overlapping spheres of culture, religion, etc. to past peoples.
the point of quoting long form 19th century supreme court rulings it to show that, not only is this completely foreign to the minds of the people who settled in the US going back to the very beginning, but it continued to be foreign to the minds of those who lived into the US until the 20th century.
but, no, you're not even addressing my point here. my point is that the whole attempt to make those clean divisions between spheres - this idea goes in this box labeled culture, this one goes in this box labeled 'secular goals', this one goes over here in the 'religion' box - is a hopeless waste of time.
why did Americans put the ten commandments in courthouses? because it was part of their culture, the history of their law code, or their faith? the only answer is yes, because America was a Christian nation. there is no scalpel precise enough to pare those things apart. if you pulled all the Christian parts out you would be left with neither culture, nor history of law, nor faith.
when you think the way you do, we have to imagine people in this country walking around with massive cognitive dissonance about the laws they were actively putting in place, or that they were somehow activists and the laws they passed were explicitly targeting some structures. the latter is true sometimes, but absolutely not always. the blasphemy case - people v ruggles - was not only a unanimous decision by the NY supreme court in 1811, but ten years later at the state constitutional convention the same justice elaborated on the decision, saying
The convention voted to confirm this ruling.
how could anyone read this and think - "justice kent and those around him clearly didn't understand free exercise of religious profession and worship! surely the people who wrote it must be wrong!"????
its far simpler to establish the idea of a people group - nation, ethnos, in the classical sense - which are not bound by genetic or what we now call ethnicity, but by what they held common in their life. the greeks called this concept nomos. Nomos is the way of life, customs, convention, that laws are drawn from, are an expression of, are derived from. It is the coherent whole that makes this people distinct from that people. Americans have never had a common genetic inheritance, but there is absolutely a nomos that distinguishes us from the other people of the world. And further, you can say that the nomos of Christianity distinguishes Christians from other peoples of the world. At times these two ways of living have overlapping to varying degrees. American law is an expression of the American nomos at all times by necessity. In the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, and into the 20th century the American nomos was a deeply Christian way of life, our laws are also derived from and are an expression of a (singular) Christian way of living. not the Christian way of living...of course that would include every authentic expression of Christianity for the past two thousand years.
there are then ways of living which are both Christian and American; and ways that are American but not Christian; and ways that are Christian but not American.
Justice Kent correctly identified that where public morals were concerned, the Christian nomos and the American nomos were one and the same.
the founders of this country expressed clearly and on multiple occasions that they derived the laws that established this country from the Christian nomos, up through the common law of England, and out of the life of the colonies. Like a flashlight with a bulb and a lens, or a building with a foundation, structure, and external edifice.
but you absolutely cannot conceive of the declaration of independence or the constitution apart from Christianity, and it is utterly impossible to have an 18th, 19th, or early 20th century American nomos apart from a Christian one, or over and against it.
the point of quoting long form 19th century supreme court rulings it to show that, not only is this completely foreign to the minds of the people who settled in the US going back to the very beginning, but it continued to be foreign to the minds of those who lived into the US until the 20th century.
but, no, you're not even addressing my point here. my point is that the whole attempt to make those clean divisions between spheres - this idea goes in this box labeled culture, this one goes in this box labeled 'secular goals', this one goes over here in the 'religion' box - is a hopeless waste of time.
why did Americans put the ten commandments in courthouses? because it was part of their culture, the history of their law code, or their faith? the only answer is yes, because America was a Christian nation. there is no scalpel precise enough to pare those things apart. if you pulled all the Christian parts out you would be left with neither culture, nor history of law, nor faith.
when you think the way you do, we have to imagine people in this country walking around with massive cognitive dissonance about the laws they were actively putting in place, or that they were somehow activists and the laws they passed were explicitly targeting some structures. the latter is true sometimes, but absolutely not always. the blasphemy case - people v ruggles - was not only a unanimous decision by the NY supreme court in 1811, but ten years later at the state constitutional convention the same justice elaborated on the decision, saying
Quote:
The court considered those blasphemous words, uttered with such an intent, as a breach of public morals, and an offence against public decency. They were indictable on the same principle as the act of wantonly going naked, or committing impure and indecent acts in the public streets. It was not because Christianity was established by law, but because Christianity was in fact the religion of this country, the rule of our faith and practice, and the basis of the public morals. Such blasphemy was an outrage upon public decorum, and if sanctioned by our tribunals would shock the moral sense of the country, and degrade our character as a Christian people.
The convention voted to confirm this ruling.
how could anyone read this and think - "justice kent and those around him clearly didn't understand free exercise of religious profession and worship! surely the people who wrote it must be wrong!"????
its far simpler to establish the idea of a people group - nation, ethnos, in the classical sense - which are not bound by genetic or what we now call ethnicity, but by what they held common in their life. the greeks called this concept nomos. Nomos is the way of life, customs, convention, that laws are drawn from, are an expression of, are derived from. It is the coherent whole that makes this people distinct from that people. Americans have never had a common genetic inheritance, but there is absolutely a nomos that distinguishes us from the other people of the world. And further, you can say that the nomos of Christianity distinguishes Christians from other peoples of the world. At times these two ways of living have overlapping to varying degrees. American law is an expression of the American nomos at all times by necessity. In the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, and into the 20th century the American nomos was a deeply Christian way of life, our laws are also derived from and are an expression of a (singular) Christian way of living. not the Christian way of living...of course that would include every authentic expression of Christianity for the past two thousand years.
there are then ways of living which are both Christian and American; and ways that are American but not Christian; and ways that are Christian but not American.
Justice Kent correctly identified that where public morals were concerned, the Christian nomos and the American nomos were one and the same.
the founders of this country expressed clearly and on multiple occasions that they derived the laws that established this country from the Christian nomos, up through the common law of England, and out of the life of the colonies. Like a flashlight with a bulb and a lens, or a building with a foundation, structure, and external edifice.
but you absolutely cannot conceive of the declaration of independence or the constitution apart from Christianity, and it is utterly impossible to have an 18th, 19th, or early 20th century American nomos apart from a Christian one, or over and against it.
