What John Hews Stood For

The majority of the last 20 minutes of the second documentary we watched title "God in America" expanded on the rise of the Catholics throughout America, and this movement was led by and Irish born Bishop, John Hews. Hews, along with thousands of other Irish people immigrated to America because of the First Amendment's promise of freedom of religion. This was just years after the Cane ridge revival in Kentucky, were many Protestants rediscovered their faith in the God and the protestant church. The Irish people come to America with the hope that Catholics will be readily accepted into this "free area", but they couldn't have been more wrong. The Protestants of New York City had implemented anti-catholic teachings into public schools, which were funded by the people living in New York City. This was what John Hews' main argument for Catholics was centered around. Hews goes to court to challenge that since the public schools (which are really protestant schools) are being funded, that the Catholics should rightfully get money to fund their own school districts as well. His argument is centered off the fact that the separation of church and state was a law, but taxpayer money (including Catholics themselves) are paying for the protestant schools. However, despite the superior argument, he looses 15:1 because the majority of the council members were protestant. However, he then responds by raising funds to build parochial schools in the city of New York for the Irish-Catholic youth, but he is not satisfied yet. Hews urges his followers to vote for Catholic city council members, and his plan works out. 8 of the 10 Catholics who ran for office were elected, and Hews brought back his argument, this time winning 8:7 majority, passing the McClay bill. This doesn't end the conflict however, because the Protestants are outraged. However, this change reflects the ideals of American democracy in place, because of the guaranteed right of freedom of religion, John Hews and the Catholic believers were able to make America their home.

"Making a Revolution"

This blog will expand on what Anna said about the documentary called “Making a Revolution”. The first question talks about the Albany Plan.  The colonies wanted a way to protect themselves, so they tried to make a military defense system.  They needed money for it, so they made the Albany Plan to get the colonies to work together to pay for the military defense of the colonies.  This plan was sent to all the colonies to sign, but not one signed it.  This was because they didn't think of themselves as one team, they thought of themselves as from their own colony instead of Americans.  Then the documentary talked about the Proclamation of 1763.  This made it so the colonists couldn't expand west because the British didn't want a war since they had just finished the French and Indian war.  So they sent British troops onto a line they create that the colonists couldn't cross.  This limited the colonists’ freedom to get land, and they had to pay for the troops to be there even though they didn't want them there.  This was through taxes that came from British Parliament which was the first time they had been taxed directly from Parliament.  Then the documentary talked about the writs of assistance which were searches warrants. This was established because British were concerned with colonists smuggling trade with the French. The British didn't like this because the French were their enemies at the time.  The colonists were upset because they had always smuggled trade and the British never said anything, and out of nowhere they decided to enforce the law.  Also this was one of the ways most people made a lot of their money, so the colonists were infuriated.   

Protestants VS. Catholics

Today we finished watching the video of "God in America." The last part of the video was about how more and more people started to migrate to the East coast. It was mostly Irish people who came to the East coast. Irish people were Catholic and in New York the people were Protestants. The Irish wanted people to convert in Catholics. The Protestants began to to make schools but in the schools the only taught about the religion of the Protestants. New York was an anti Catholic and so the teachers made the kids think that Catholicism was bad and the Protestant religion was good. A lot of Catholics got mad and they made their children drop out of school. Soon the Catholics went to a Catholic Bishop (John). He was a very religious people and he said he would help them make schools for Catholics. He went to debate with the government to get money to make catholic schools. He thought it wasn't fair that only Protestants could make schools but not Catholics. He was sure he was going to get money to make the schools but the he lost 15-1. It was clearly that he was going to loose because all the people from the government were Protestants. He got no money to make Catholics schools. But then he thought about it and saw that they could make schools because they didn't have to depend on the government. Then we saw the first part of a  video which is called "Making a Revolution." It was about what the Albany Plan is. The Albany plan indicates that the British needed to get as many colonies together and discuss on how they protect themselves from Attacks for the Indians, Spanish, and French. Also the colonists got mad because the proclamation act was passed because they couldn't get land and they had to pay money for tax which was for the troops. Also they had writs of assistance which is a search warrant to stop smuggling and trade with the enemies.

The Separation of the Church and the State

Thomas Jefferson was a big believer in equality and liberty.  He was one of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and strongly supported the ideas in it.  He said that religion and church should be completely separate, and so he ended up helping the Baptists by taking their petition into the court.  This petition said the Baptists should be free to preach without having a license.  Jefferson himself was a Deist who believed that God was not in control of daily life and believed in reason and science to explain things which used to be explained by the works of God.  He did not agree with the Baptists’ ideas at all but believed they should be able to practice whatever type of religion they wanted.  Though he had some problems passing the bill because another man on the Virginia Assembly thought religion being not a part of the government would make religion go away because people would stop practicing it since they didn't have to. Or, he thought it could also make too many religions and every person would have a different religion.  So he drafted a bill advocating for the government to fund all religions.  Jefferson believed the government would kill religion.  Eventually Jefferson's bill was passed but some of Henry's ideas came to play.  People started to question religion and stopped going to church.  Eventually though, they began to feel lost and weren't sure where or which religion to turn to.  This lead to a meetings held by preachers who believed the people needed to be saved from no religion.  They conducted large meetings and preached for hours.  The people that went there weeped, fainted and asked for forgiveness for their sins and for not practicing a religion.  This lead to more and more meetings spread throughout the colonies.

Separation of the church and state

Today we watched another episode of  "God in America." It was about how Baptists came to Virginia and started to convert Anglicans into Baptists. The Anglicans didn't like the fact that Baptists were trying convert the Anglicans into Baptists and so the Government started to send people who were preaching without a license to jail. But you couldn't get a license if you were preaching for the Anglicans. Jeremiah Moore was sent to jail because he sacrificed everything for his religion. From the jail cell he would preach to people outside his window cell. The Baptist people went to look for Thomas Jefferson and he compromised with them. He said he would help him because he believed that the government should stay out of peoples religion. Thomas Jefferson then began writing a new bill about religion. When they passed the bill, the congress didn't say that it was certain that religion was going to be free. Then there was another man who went to a meeting in the woods. He wasn't expecting a lot of people there but there was 20,000 people. He was just going to go observe and watch if what he had heard was true. After when he got there, he heard people preaching and he fainted. He said that he felt god in him.

Church and State Should be Seperate

The idea of separation of state and church was made so that people could believe in whatever they want and have whatever values they want without being prosecuted by the government.  To this day we haven't completely rid ourselves from religion involved in the government.  Examples of this from class include the words "In God we Trust" on our money and the pledge of alliance. I don't think this significantly harms our society but I think it weakens our bond as a country.  We should keep moving farther away from these references to God since some people don't believe in God (such as Buddhism) or believe in multiple gods.  Also in schools, we get two weeks off for Christmas, but most of the time we have school during the Jewish holiday Hanukkah even though it is also their major holiday.  The Constitution says everyone is equal but by favoring or paying more attention to some religions over others we are saying that not everyone is equal and some types of people are better than others.  We as a society should start to accommodate and think more about the religions with a minority.  There is a heavy Christian majority of people in the US, but that should not be a justification for all of these pro- Christianity examples in the government and everyday life. Religious opinions should not be heard in the government even though for the time being we will continue to have a Christian majority in Congress.

The Issue of Seperation of Church and State in America

The "wall of separation between church and state" is clearly stated in the Constitution under the First Amendment. However, what limitations should politicians have in expressing their religious beliefs or there of? In the article we read in class today, "American democracy's real doctrine: religious neutrality," author Jane Eisner incorporates a republican conservative, an extremely atheist liberal man, and a devout catholic democrat. Senator Santorum, the republican conservative, believed that Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state" that was passed as the government neutrality of religion in the constitution only led to more secularization within the government system, which fueled more fights over religious neutrality within politicians. Justice Hugo Black, who happened to be anti-Catholic and anti-Jew, was the head of the supreme court during the Everson v Board of Education of the township of Ewing trials. He made the trials more contradicting and confusing by promoting not religious neutrality but rather anti-religion in government. He contributed largely to the continuous growth of the wars of religion in the mid 1900s in America. John J. DiIulio, a catholic democrat wrote The Godly Republic. In his book, he published that he did not support "religious establishment nor in strict separation" and believed in a "faith friendly equal protection". His wording supports the involvement of religion in politics, but should it really be allowed. The article goes on to say that "Catholics may be ascendant now, with a decisive majority on the supreme court and unfettered access to the elective office." If Catholics have the majority religion, though, what happens to the other minority religions? The author later states that "protecting the neutrality doctrine is so essential for American Jews." So, can politicians who promote religious views damage other religions and create an imbalance of religious powers, eventually disrupting the "wall of separation between church and state"?

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