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#Post#: 33--------------------------------------------------
Jefferson's Preamble
DIR By: forbitals
Date: April 17, 2019, 8:07 pm
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Right here, "The Cathedral of the World, a Universalist
Theology" by Forrest Church.
page 39, What Would Jefferson Do?
"
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson together embody the Declaration
of Independence, the former as the document's most compelling
sponsor, the later its author -- then together through the
stirring coincidence of their both dying on July 4, 1826, fifty
years to the day it was published.
.
.
.
Theologically, the second and third U.S. presidents were
unitarians: Adams, a member of the Quincy, Massachusetts,
congregation; Jefferson a sect unto himself.
.
.
.
As the election of 1800 drew near, Adams faced that looming
electoral rematch against Jefferson, his vice president and
political enemy. The Federalists derided the politically potent
Virginian as an "atheist" (untrue), a "deist" (true), and a
"Jacobin" (i.e., "French radical," also true). The Federalists
summed up their two greatest nightmares, atheism and popular
democracy, by hurling the epithet "Jacobin" at their opponents.
Adams had no sympathy for the French Revolution. Years later,
he looked back bitterly on the "hot, rash, blind, headlong,
furious efforts to ameliorate the condition of society, to
establish liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man."
Adams especially scorned Democratic-Republicans like Jefferson
who admired the revolutionary French Republic.
(speaking of Independence Day celebrations) The
Democratic-Republicans wore French colors (cocked hats with a
knot of red, white, and blue ribbons pinned to the side), in
saucy contrast to the less frivolous black cockades Federalist
stalwarts wore, harking back to the Revolutionary days. To
Federalist eyes, Democratic-Republicans with their tricolor
cockades had taken the Fourth of July hostage by drawing undue
attention to the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
In writing the Declaration, Jefferson had introduced three lofty
principles (the right to liberty, God-given equality, and
popular sovereignty) and one incendiary one (the people's
authority to overthrow their government). The Federalists'
problem, as they themselves soon recognized, lay in the
Declaration of Independence itself.
Early in Adam's presidency, proper Philadelphians boycotted
Independence Day, which might as well have been Bastille Day as
far as the local Federalists were concerned. Nary a black
cockade was to be seen on the anniversary of the nation's birth.
Many church bells remained silent. And every reveler crowding
Independence Square was indecently festooned in heretical red,
white, and blue. In New England, separate tricolor and black
cockade Fourth of July celebrations became the rule. In their
orations, Federalist preachers and politicians dedicated their
energies on the nation's birthday to critique the un-American,
anti-Christian dogma that Jefferson so impudently inserted into
the nation's founding document. In his Boston Independence Day
oration in 1799, John Lowell warned his listeners to beware "the
seductive doctrines of 'Liberty' and 'Equality.'"
The year before, Alexander Hamilton had no difficulty convincing
Adams that for the government to proclaim a national fast day, a
federal request honored by all the churches that chose to
participate, would galvanize his more conservative Federalist
political base. Indeed it did. Raising a host of traditional
black cockades, hundreds of New England preachers seized this
governmentally sanctioned opportunity to pronounce French and
Jeffersonian infidelity a demonic double threat to the future of
America's Christian republic.
Later in life, Adams looked back ruefully on his decision to
promote a religious event for political gain. He went so far as
to claim that it cost him the presidency. for one thing, it
left the plausible impression that he had buckled under pressure
from Presbyterian church leaders, who urgently were calling for
the president to proclaim a day of national worship.
Declaring a national fast was like poking a stick into a nest of
hornets. In alarm, dissenting Christians (Baptists, Methodists,
and the like) howled that Adams was compromising church-state
separation. For sound religious reasons, not only did they
boycott the fast, but they also came out in droves to support
Jefferson, the more secular candidate.
.
.
.
The Declaration of Independence elevated people's sights by
placing human law on a higher moral pediment. The result was a
civil ethic in which the ideals of liberty and equality received
unprecedented priority.
.
.
.
In its ringing, redemptive moral urgency, Jefferson's Preamble
is rightly remembered as the American Creed.
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I tell you, this F. Forrest Church, son of Idaho Senator Frank
Church, he really knows his stuff, and he writes well too. If
his kind of thinking and reasoning were typical in America, this
country, then it would be an entirely different sort of country,
and the entire world would be different too.
Georges Delerue, Music for the film Dien Bien Phu
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNoPRu1uQP4
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz0Adk2OUAM
Monterey Pop Festival 1968 CD1 cut (really good)
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAOH4mYk-AI
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