An argument between two devout Christians went like this:
Me: Biblical government would be so small.I then sent him the above video. I should have sent the one below too.
Friend: Yes, but I don't think the secular public wants a biblical government. And I (a Christian) don't want really overly religious government either. They are bad at times.
Me: I don't care about religious governments. (I don't defend general religion or general theism.)** And you don't believe in all religions anyway. If you're saying that the kind of government that your God prescribed is not good enough, then what is?
Friend: I think a limited one is good. And you are just assuming that all the people in the country would want our God's government. That's why we formulated the original version of this government -- to prevent tyranny in all forms, secular and religious.
Me: The problem with that is that the U.S. Constitution itself was always an assault on Christianity -- a coup d'etat on our decentralized, overly Christian (religious) federation.*** I'm not the one defending tyranny here, although what you have in mind as our original government is admittedly a step up from what we have now. But so is tea in comparison to soda. That still doesn't make it water.
Friend: I don't see the Constitution as an assault on Christianity. I see it as a resistance to religious tyranny like radical Islam and the Inquisition of the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages.
*This was a text conversation that I edited for grammar.
**Words in bold were added for clarity. In fact, the text original read: "I don't care about relgious governments. U don't believe in all religions anyway. If your saying that the kind of government that your God prescribed is not good enough, then what is? (spelling preserved)
***By this I mean in the same way Gary North meant it. Gary North puts it this way:
"In 1787, the states, with one exception (Rhode Island), were explicitly based on faith in God. In most cases, elected state representatives were required to swear their belief in the Trinity. The new Constitution made all such oaths illegal for Federal office (Article VI, Clause III). By means of the 14th Amendment (1868), the U.S. Supreme Court has applied this prohibition to state governments, completing the transformation in the case of Torcasso v. Watkins (1961)."
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