Page 203 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers

A Patriot’s view of the history and direction of our Country

church was a ‘co-governing body’. Laws were made that the church

wanted. There was vast corruption between nobility and church
leaders. There was vast distrust. The king of England formed the

state religion – the Church of England – because the pope would not
grant a divorce. The Magna Carta was not enforced, in part,

because of religious interference and preferences. Countries, and
their crowns, were granted boundaries and authorities from the

church. The pope even divided the world, and granted colonies and
territories to the existing European empires, based on this

unexplored line of demarcation. The history of religion and
government is not filled with positive outcomes. Our Founding

Fathers expressed and recognized this, together with the knowledge
that the core of the Judeo-Christian beliefs were also the moral

fabric of a free society.
From England’s break with the Catholic Church, through the

reigns of various Protestant and Catholic monarchs, the English
people were pushed towards one church or another. In the name of

the crown and with the intent of protecting the spiritual welfare of
the people, English men and women were arrested, imprisoned,

tortured, and killed. This is the background of both the Great
Awakening and the founding of our country. It was to avoid this

persecution, prosecution and execution that they established
freedom of religion so that none here would ever have to choose

between their safety and their conscience.

The Judeo-Christian faiths consist primarily of Catholicism and
protestants (and various sub-groups and stand-alone, from Baptists
to Mormons), and Jewish. This is not a treatise on religion, so

-- 203 --