Saturday, July 13, 2013

Samuel Adams and Catholics

In a story about how Samuel Adams beer is catching flak for leaving "by their Creator" out of  an ad which quotes the Declaration of Independence, we get this little fact:
Sam Adams himself wrote a lot about God. His dad even wanted him to go into the clergy. Instead, Adams became a lawyer and one of the firebrands of the American Revolution. In 1772, he penned a report called The Rights of the Colonists that was presented at a Boston town meeting.
In it he argued for religious tolerance. Except for Catholics. Because, he explained, Catholic dogma and doctrine leads “directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war, and bloodshed.”
So ol’ Sam wasn’t perfect. None of our Founding Fathers were. But he probably wouldn’t have been happy about the beer named for him eliding the creator from its ad.
The founders of the nation couldn't have guessed that Catholics would be the largest single denomination in the country, and they'd have been horrified by the prospect.  That's one thing I keep in mind when conservative Catholics join in with evangelical Protestants and insist that the United States is a Christian nation.  Until the past sixty years or so, when somebody said that, they meant Protestant.  I won't be making the Christian nation claim.

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