Ken Burns and Krista Tippett talk about America's religious roots 

Same here

Sorry for your wrong thoughts. But the Bible is very amazingly scientifically accurate with round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more. Many other religions like Hinduism cannot make such claims

The word ‘dogma’ is ascribed a pejorative sense that is not remotely original. Dogma in theological matters means that which is revealed by God, amd therefore not subject to debate. Doctrine is what translates the self-revelation of God into human terms that can be discussed critically. Discipline is how doctrine is applied for the well-being of the community in God. Opinion is what every theologizing person utters of his own personal insight and feeling. Many denominations have a history of expressing their religious identity in very controlling ways, introjecting their doctrines into personal matters obtrusively, with a kind of vehemence that betrays a fragility borne of sectarian, minority belief. The model is an activist community of faith up against the world and its ruler in a pitched battle. This focus on conflict common to most Protestantism is what causes the trauma we hear about so commonly.

Yawn

Thank you, but you must be referring to another Ken.

He did also show Ho Chi Minh was a brutal mass-murderer of landlords in North Vietnam in the 1950s. And Ho was. But the Bible has incredible scientific accuracy like round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more. The Bible is a bigger enigma that the all of and the greatest of Egyptian Pyramids. So the Bible needs a special and revered place in the life of every person who can think. In short. Burns deserves great credit for pointing out how bad North Vietnam was in the 1950s. But he is still just a regular man and cannot be revered!

Same here. It took me so many years to understand how misguided those denominations are that boil the faith down to individual hell avoidance. I'm 72 and it's only been in the last 10 years of intense Bible study that I've come to have a completely revamped faith. The Bible does not support so much of what we were taught. I suddenly see that my purpose is, as much as possible, to live and love like Jesus. Full stop. This has been so liberating and it's made it much simpler to think in terms of how my words and actions can advance God's kingdom here on earth each day. Blessings on your journey.

I grew up that way too, and walked away for many years. I missed the close community. I found a very main stream church with rainbow flags, and sign language, and wheelchair ramps, and a female priest.

Me too, as I left my evangelical church at age 16. I became a professor of Buddhism and found a world completely different from anything I experienced. In fact, I'm now also involved with the Anglicans (Episcopal) and Friends (Quakers), groups very different from the close-minded world I grew up with. Now that I've read the Bible quite carefully after my Mom's death two years ago, I realize that these folks I grew up with have never actually read their Bible. They literally don't know the contents. It's pathetic and very sad to see, because they follow ministers on bended knee who are typically on some sort of horrific ego-trip. If you read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, you receive an absolutely different impression from the world taught by the vast majority of evangelicals. And now they've taken in a more destructive route even than before in the US, tragically.

I’m sorry. I hope your humanity is set free in whatever way is good for you. Whatever ways help you know that you are good.

@brianruppert1071 I couldn't agree with you more. You've identified so many of the problems with modern Christianity. I'm glad that I'm affiliated with a United Methodist Church that places a high value on daily living and loving like Jesus.

The founders thought that this republic could only survive if the people were Bible believers, citizens pursuing the good, the beautiful, and the true. They didn't want an official national denomination in order to protect religious freedom (the individual states had official state denominations, Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Congregational, etc).

@@MarkDouglass-dt9ky The U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention Christianity or any specific religion. The Declaration of Independence famously proclaims that people’s rights come from a “Creator” and “Nature’s God” - but doesn’t specify who or what that is. To suggest that the FF intended for everyone in the country to be "Bible believers" is absurd and contradicts what is spelled out in the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

​@@ga6589They did intend that Creator to be God. Not a bunch of gods!

Bible has incredible scientific accuracy like round Earth and jet streams and the hydrologic cycle and much more!

@@user-th9kl4tk5c What credible evidence do you have that the FF intended for our country's government to be based on ANY particular religion? Christianity is not mentioned once in the DI or Constitution, let alone a particular denomination. The Treaty of Tripoli, passed by Congress and signed by President John Adams, made clear that the US was not founded on Christianity. Would you be okay if laws are passed requiring that we post the Ten Commandments in all public buildings and schools, mandate church attendance and god-worship, and criminalize atheism? Correct me if I misunderstand, but it appears that you are suggesting that the US was meant to exclude people who do not conform to a certain religious dogma, or that a certain set of religious beliefs should be the law of the land. This is not a government for the people, by the people, or the indivdual rights to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. It's a theocracy.

Indifference to saints? Why?

@@ek6321 I can only offer my subjective understanding; take it or leave it as you wish. Indifference doesn't imply disdain or rejection, but rather impartiality. Love of God (or the Creator, or Life Force, etc.) transcends any intermediary such as churches, prophets, saints, which are inevitably limited in time and venue. Gurdjieff certainly made every effort to discourage people from putting him, the person, on a pedestal. "Take nothing I say on faith, but as something to be verified in yourself." If I find help from a saint, I embrace it, but not because it comes from a so-called saint.

People need to unlearn everything that was passed down. I'm glad this is being talked about.

The problem of evil is the biggest blemish on humanity. What we have done is superficial as humans did not create anything in the world but was given them what God gave themwhich includes abilities.

Interesting point! Thank you!

When another form of life on this planet is able to do a tiny fraction of what humans can do, wake the rest of us up.

Agree. This chosen species thing has been hijacked by bad, greedy mostly white men. My hope is we begin to see churches that try to turn people back toward the importance of nature, and if we do not pay attention to how nature has been damaged, we will suffer.

So beautifully expressed, @treefrog!

As Burns commented, the Founders were intensely interested in classical virtues and those principles are reflected in what one might call a transcendent document. The only mention of gender in the Constitution is an off-hand reference to the presidency. Slavery is directly discouraged by all but one (fugitive return) paragraph. There are no other racial limits in the Constitution. Nor is there any positive reference to religion, Christianity, or Jesus (despite heavy pressure to the contrary). Despite a host of personal and cultural defects, the Constitution is a remarkably inclusive, even aspirational, document. The failure is with our entire legal system as well as our national culture. As Mark Twain commented, "A crime preserved in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law." (Just an amplification of your final comment.)

@@rodkuehn8157 - Here is how Kurt Andersen put it: "When somebody asked Alexander Hamilton why the Framers hadn't mentioned God in the Constitution, his answer was deadpan hilarious: "We forgot." "

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Can you elaborate re: the ways that you feel faith is active in civic life?

@@born2bwildne744 - As I mentioned, I live in Israel, which is what I am referring to. Though we don't have a constitution that demands a wall between church and state.

@@szeevster5767 that does not really address my request for elaboration.

@@born2bwildne744 - I’m not sure what you’re looking for. But as I have already said, there’s no division between church and state here. Religious and secular (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) schools are available to all. Public transportation is not allowed on the Jewish sabbath in many cities, etc. Better?

@@szeevster5767 public transportation is not available on the sabbath in many cities? So regardless of one’s faith, public transportation isn’t working in many cities on Saturdays? Isn’t that government favoring one faith versus all others? How do you think that helps Israeli society/civic life? Here is USA, we have different types of schools too, including of various religions and denominations. Doesn’t the Israeli Constitution define Israel as a Jewish state? The USA Constitution is silent on religion - we do not build a religious nor ethnic definition into our Constitution. How does the Israeli public education system address non-Jewish students? Are educational opportunities and support equalized across all religious and ethnic students?

Similarly, I was raised Unity, attended Unitarian for a while when I moved out on my own, and am generally drawn to humanism, but tend to adhere to direct experience in a living world (i.e., 'nature').

@@MarmaladeINFP This is the first time I was clever enough to figure out how to reply, because of your response, thank you. What is your biggest listen? You've learned recently from life. That surprised you?

Our laws should be based upon nature's. Whether political or religious. The love of money is the root of evil sure shows up in our political realm.

There is a common morality and that is the rate the prostitute and lover ethics. Which creates a hell, purgatory or paradise on earth, Free will and freedom allows us to choose. We are not robots.

We are 3 persons and one, physical intellectual and emotional beings or body-mind and spirit.. Emotions provide the energy promotion it animates us and motivates us and creates all our values. Yet it is as unseen as the air, That is everywhere and essential. So sayeth I, I don't know what others say, but I'm willing to have it disproved if you would like to.

It was both. Many came here to practice religions that did need protection from the State

@@elizabethhopkins7582I don’t think it was the secular part of the state the churches needed protection from. They needed protection from the majority church that had infiltrated the state. That’s why I say, religious freedom is only threatened by other religions or denominations.

The Son of God.

Lighting and video.

Deists included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, etc. Also, mostly deist were George Washington and James Monroe, while John Adams was partly deist and partly orthodox. The only major founder who was fully orthodox was Samuel Adams. A large number of the founders didn't believe in communion, confirmation, resurrection, Christ-divinity, Trinity, and miracles (Jim Peterson, "The Revolution of Belief"). Jefferson famously cut up multiple Bibles to eliminate all the miracles and glue back together the parts and versions he liked. Deists believed in a God but it was a God that created but didn't later intervene with miracles. None of that necessarily contradicts faith in a personal God, divine providence, heaven, etc. The main thing is that the Founders, in opposing not only imperialism and monarchism but also theocracy, didn't see religion as political justification. As Kurt Andersen put it, "When somebody asked Alexander Hamilton why the Framers hadn't mentioned God in the Constitution, his answer was deadpan hilarious: "We forgot."" Of course, they didn't actually forget. Their lack of invoking a deity and religion was consciously and carefully intentional. Having fought for indepence from an empire that had a state religion, they had no interest in re-establishing politicized religiosity.

@@MarmaladeINFP The entire political philosophy undergirding the American constitutional order is Christian in both origin and in substance. Take a look at the Library of Congress online exhibit on Religion and the American Founding, which I provide a link to above. In that you will find a discussion of deism, which is deemed a marginal influence on the founding. Tom Paine and Ethan Allen were not typical in their views at the time. Also, the founding generation relied on the Bible and Christian theorists for justifying the Revolution and the subsequence governance of the new nation ("The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought," Donald S. Lutz The American Political Science Review Vol. 78, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 189-197. ) John Locke was especially influential with all of the Founders referring to him explicitly or implicitly such as Jefferson in the Declaration and Hamilton in his "The Farmer Refuted," where he openly appeals to God and natural rights. Locke wrote from an openly Christian perspective in his defense of of natural rights based in natural law as endowments from God. Locke on just about every page of his political writings refers to God or to the Bible as did the Founders. Just read *Second Treatise on Civil Government* and for a Christian defense of religious liberty, read his "Letter Concerning Toleration." Locke, the early Baptists such as Roger Williams nor the Framers of the First Amendment sought to marginalize religion. Our entire legal and political system is based on these Christian principles. In practical terms, even deists and unitarians such as Jefferson and Adams who identified as Christians worked from the same natural law foundation as orthodox trinitarian Christians. All of the Founders linked virtue with liberty and saw religion as foundational in theory and in practice to ethical, self-controlled behavior. Consider here Washington's Farewell Address and such comments as these from John Adams ""Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Consider the origins of constitutionalism dating back to the early documents of the Pilgrims and Massachusetts Bay colony. They were explicitly Christian replete with biblical references. The U.S. Constitution is drawn from these early documents from a number of colonies especially Massachusetts. If you look at the first state constitution of Massachusetts, it is very similar to the U.S. Constitution. Political scientist Donald Lutz's historical and philosophical account of the Constitution finds that the notion of a covenant and then a compact based in the governance of Protestant religious sects dating back to the late 16th and early 17th Centuries is the origin of our Constitution. See his *The Origins of American Constitutionalism.* Also see Princeton historian Perez Zagorin's tracing religious toleration to Christian theology in his *How The Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West.* The vast majority of the American colonists who founded the U.S. were orthodox Christians as were most of the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution. All of them valued the public role for religion and traditional morality.

Many fascist regimes in various countries were led by Catholics. There were Nazi Catholics in Germany, and many German-American Catholics supported the Nazis.

Your comment is the only one I've read here that points to the truth of the Gospel. God bless you for your insight and your boldness.

"My beliefs aren't religion, they're the TRUTH." The most terrifying statement made by men. Will we ever escape?