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Un-separating Church & State

Un-separating Church & State

An ape-like Catholic nun is sewing together church and state. Get it?  Thomas Nast not-to-subtle message is that American Catholics wanted to destroy the sacred system of separation of church and state. Indeed, a quick way to signal your anti-Catholic bona fides was to declare your support for separation.  Note, too, the simian Irishman sneering at Liberty who is chained to a bucket of “fraudulent votes.” Protestants accused Catholics of wanting state money to subsidize Catholic schools, which did happen…

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Young James Madison

Young James Madison

This is James Madison at age 32. His coming of age had coincided with a massive wave of religious persecution in that part of Virginia. Between 1760 and 1778, there were more than 150 major attacks against Baptists in the colony, most of them carried out by leaders of local Anglican churches – and most within a horse ride of Madison’s home in Orange County, Virginia.“That diabolical, Hell-conceived principle of persecution rages,” he said to his friend William Bradford. He…

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Haun’s Mill Massacre

Haun’s Mill Massacre

On October 27, 1938, the Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs, issued Executive Order 44, one of the most astonishing documents in the history of religious freedom in America. It declared,  “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary.” Yes, the Governor of Missouri ordered the extermination of all Mormons.   The image above depicts what happened a few days later. About 250 vigilantes attacked a Mormon community called Hauns Mill and…

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Madison’s Life Mask

Madison’s Life Mask

I admittedly I have a bit of a thing for James Madison.  In addition to the powerful role he played in advancing religious freedom, I think he was overshadowed by Jefferson because he was short, sickly and not a very good writer.  This, believe it or not, is a life mask of James Madison. No person played a more important role in the creation of religious freedom than Madison. He was heavily influenced by evangelicals in Virginia, having witness horrible…

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The River Ganges

The River Ganges

Look closely: those crocodiles coming ashore to eat the children are actually Catholic Bishops!  The boy standing bravely on the beach has a Holy Bible sticking out of his coat. A gutted building behind them is labelled Public Schools.  What’s this all about? In the 1870s, when this Thomas Nast cartoon was published, Protestants were aggressively casting Catholics as anti-Bible.  The reason: the Catholics resisted having their kids forced to read the King James version of the Bible (instead of…

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W.D. Mohammed

W.D. Mohammed

He risked his life by leading tens of thousands of African Americans toward mainstream Islam One of the least appreciated figures in American religious history is Wallace Deen Mohammed. He was the son of Elijah Muhammed, the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam (which wasn’t really Islamic)  When Elijah died W.D., the designated successor, shocked the followers by declaring that it was time to follow actual Islam. Adapted from Sacred Liberty In the early twentieth century, religious entrepreneurs attempted…

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Four Chaplains

Four Chaplains

In a White House ceremony celebrating this stamp, President Harry Truman declared, “The greatest sermon that ever was preached is right here on this stamp.” It refers to an incident in which two ministers, a priest and rabbi gave up their life preservers as the U.S. Dorchester sank after being hit by a German torpedo in 1942.  The story of their heroism hit a nerve in part because it fit a new message from the U.S. government – that one…

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The Fourth Freedom

The Fourth Freedom

Eleven months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt became convinced that Europe would be overrun if we didn’t help Britain right away. Many Americans opposed getting involved in the European war, so to mobilize support for aiding Britain, Roosevelt explained that the efforts were needed to preserve four essential freedoms. Rather than reciting the Bill of Rights, Roosevelt came up with his own list: freedom of speech and expression; freedom from want; freedom from fear—and the “freedom of every…

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Excluding Asians (and Hindus and Buddhists)

Excluding Asians (and Hindus and Buddhists)

The makers of a dishwashing fluid in 1886 capitalized on anti-Asian sentiment. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was driven by racist theories of ethnic superiority and some concerns about Chinese competing for American jobs. Eugenics was on the rise and taken quite seriously. A report from a congressional committee explained that there was “not sufficient brain capacity in the Chinese race to furnish motive power for self-government” and that “there is no Aryan or European race which is not…

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