[Magdalen] 239th year since the birth of the United States of America as a nation

[ME Michaud]

We are remembering that Rhode Island was founded because
Roger Williams suddenly realized infant baptism wasn't a good
thing. And so he had to leave Massachusetts.

Rhode Island was early to sign on to diversity. The oldest
synagogue in the USA is in Newport (founded around two hundred
years before the Inquisition was formally ended in Spain).
-M


On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Lynn Ronkainen <houstonklr at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Regarding Unitarians...In commenting recently to someone regarding the
> role and separation of church/state in the minds of the authors/writers of
> our nations founding documents I said that T Jefferson could never have
> imagined the quantity or diversity of "houses of worship" that exist today.
> Lynn
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 3, 2015, at 8:12 AM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> From: Zephonites--- via Magdalen
>
> > America celebrates her 239th birthday tomorrow.  According to a  recent
> > survey, nearly two in three Americans say God has granted our nation  an
> > exceptional role in human history.  Is this true?
>
> That's close to the number who believe UFOS are around and have landed.
> though almost a third higher than the number of Americans who believe space
> aliens have kidnapped Americans from time to time.
>
> I think Murray misses the reality of several of the founders who believed
> that nearly all Americans would be Unitarians by 1831 (forty years? two
> generations) because it was the only faith compatible with reason and
> enlightenment of the Constitution.
>
> If polling data on space aliens can be believed, that was a prescient --
> though unfulfilled -- view.
>
> It would also indicated that only a tiny minority of people who call
> themselves Christians are  skeptical of the concept of American
> Exceptionalism.  I don’t think that's true at all. The concept tends to be
> a meme of the right wing these days, and that's not a majority by any means.
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
>