The Real Reason

 Today’s rant is brought to you by — a lesson in history. If you will, step into my Time Machine, and let’s take a trip back into European history.

In the year 1631, during the period called the Thirty Years War, a General Tilly conquered the German city of Rothenburg, o.d. Tauber after a siege of the city. During their surrender, he offered to save the city from immediate and total death if one person in the city could drink — in one draught — a three liter carafe of wine. Fortunately, the city mayor did exactly that, and they celebrate that even today.

But what’s the lesson there? What can we learn? That drinking wine is a saving grace? Hardly, tho it makes a great story that draws tourists!

No, the lesson is more down to earth, and it goes to the construction of our Constitution and the First Amendment.

So, think past the wine. What was the true horror of that story? It’s the fact that Rothenburg’s residents were really, truly in deep, recognizable, and totally justified fear that day. More than one German town had been completely depopulated by an invading force, and the entire reason for that thirty years long war was — religion. That’s it. Oh, sure there was the usual BS of human motivation for power, sure. That never goes away in these things, certainly when the political people are the ones in charge of the armies. But the major fight was over which denomination of Christianity would govern Europe — Catholicism or Protestantism. (In Germany the latter is called Evangelisch. No actual relation to the denominations called that today, tho. In the US, they’re called Lutheran.). But that was the entire motivation — control of a very real political nature.

Violent control.

So, now, let’s take a step back into that Time Machine, and go to the period after the summer of 1787 in the town of Philadelphia, PA. That summer was the constitutional convention that resulted in our current Constitution. The previous attempt at a federal governing structure failed because it was too weak, and the founders knew, correctly, that a change was needed. So, let's skip through the ensuing period to where they eventually (actually after that convention) get to talking about the amendments, so we can get to the first amendment and religion.

Our modern (in my day anyway, so not so modern anymore) history would have you think that the founders made religious separation of church and state because of their beliefs in equality. Nah. Not so fast. They still had agreed on a constitution that preserved slavery, so equality is just a facade.

What they were really afraid of was another religious war.

Don’t forget, the country at the time was made up of 13 contentious colonies, each of which was founded by different groups. Most of them had differing motivations, but most were also religiously different from one another. And among the founders themselves the diversity ranged from the more fanatic from Massachusetts to the deist folks like Jefferson. It isn’t recorded that I know of, but I’d bet that any attempts to talk about religion and the new governing structure were so fraught with the landmines of disagreement that eventually what they did was punt.

They agreed to disagree. And that’s EXACTLY what the first amendment does. It allows Americans to disagree without government interference. You see that’s what religious strife in Europe was, basically, all about. Which denomination OF CHRISTIANITY would rule Europe. And there were some substantial differences between the Protestants and the RCC. The founders were, after the Revolutionary war, determined to keep war off our shores if at all possible, and with two very large oceans on either side of them (and most of a big continent to the west), they felt fairly isolated and (after holding off the very large and powerful British Empire for some years) pretty confident they could.

That left internal conflict. From the past history of Europe and Britain, they felt that the closest and most ever present threat was religious strife over control.

The solution was to eliminate the possibility of control falling to ANY religious group. Let them all agree to disagree, but remove the ability of any one of them to force the others to obey. Don’t forget their aversion to a standing army that a tyrant could use in that effort.

So, now let’s get back into that Time Machine and get back home.

What we’ve learned with today’s trip into time is that today’s strife is based on one party’s determination to break the Constitution. That’s all it can be. If they truly had the love and devotion to that document that they claim, their attempts to force the most fanatical of America’s Christian denominations’ beliefs on the rest of us would never be happening. They’d see that for what it is — a violation of the founders’ attempt to never bring religious war to America’s shores. Make no mistake — that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

Thanks for taking this trip back into time with me! I hope we all learned something today.