{"id":1022,"date":"2010-08-24T14:55:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T18:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2010-08-24T14:55:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T18:55:38","slug":"the-baptists-the-sufis-and-the-two-blocks-from-ground-zero-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/24\/the-baptists-the-sufis-and-the-two-blocks-from-ground-zero-mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baptists, The Sufis, and the “Two Blocks from Ground Zero Community Center”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

First Baptist Church in America<\/p><\/div>\n

They came to this country searching for religious freedom.\u00a0 Those of similar but not identical faith considered them to be a threat to the “pure faith”.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t long before they were told that their type of religion would not be tolerated, even outlawed in some cases.<\/p>\n

They were maligned and denied the right to build their houses of worship.\u00a0 Freedom of worship apparently only meant freedom to worship as some other people or government dictated.
\n
\nOf course this was not freedom of religion at all, but only the freedom to practice my religion as long as I can use political force to impose it upon others.\u00a0 In other words and in concept — a\u00a0 state religion.<\/p>\n

Early Christianity in the America<\/h3>\n

From these people, led by one Roger Williams, came a revolutionary idea — the idea that the governments, local or otherwise, could not use their powers to establish or enforce any religious teachings.<\/p>\n

His own experience included official banishment <\/a>from colonial Massachusetts in October 1635 when he was tried by the General Court and convicted of sedition and heresy. The Court declared that he was spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions.”<\/p>\n

Williams, at first a Massachusetts Puritan, had become a Separatist, giving up on his effort to reform or “purify” the Church of England, the state religion of colonial Massachusets.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there was no legal sanction for someone who had left the state church, but continued to live according to the principles of his faith.<\/p>\n

In addition he asserted that the civil magistrates may not punish any sort of “breach” …\u00a0 such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that every individual should be free to follow his own convictions in religious matters.<\/p>\n

Right from the beginning, he sounded three principles which were central to his subsequent career: Separatism, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.\u00a0 Wikipedia on Roger Williams.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This means that credit for the twin concepts of separation of church and state <\/em>and freedom of religion<\/em> goes in part to Roger Williams and a group of persecuted worshipers which became known as Baptists<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Others had articulated the concepts, but it was Williams’ colonial Rhode Island (Providence Settlement) which would become a haven for those “distressed of conscience,” and it soon attracted quite a collection of dissenters and independent thinkers.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 Modern Counterpart<\/h3>\n

The Sufi Muslims came to this country believing that their rights to purchase land and build businesses or worship centers, and otherwise practice their religion and culture would not be questioned. They came expecting a society of religious diversity, like that guaranteed by the US Constitution.<\/p>\n

They knew well the efforts of the extremists seeking to deter any non-radical form of Islam as was demonstrated recently in Pakistan when terrorists bombed a Sufi shrine<\/a> while killing 40 worshipers, and wounding another 122.<\/p>\n

\n

The targeted shrine is that of Data Ganj Bakhsh Hajveri, who lived hundreds of years ago and traveled throughout the region spreading a message of peace and love. He eventually settled in the Lahore area, and his shrine is the most revered and most popular of Sufi shrines in the nation.
\nFox News Online, July 1, 2010<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Any informed Sufi Muslim would know that this moderate and willingly co-existent expression would not be tolerated in much of the Muslim world, especially those countries overseen by fundamentalist clerics.\u00a0 In that respect they were not all that different from our country’s first immigrants.<\/p>\n

What these Muslim immigrants could not have anticipated was the tragedy of 9\/11 with its anti-Muslim backlash.\u00a0 They could not have known that the very people who would happily murder them would fly planes into the Twin Towers slaughtering Christian and Jew and Muslim alike.<\/p>\n

And they could not have known that so called Christian Americans would equate them with the murderers of Al Queada.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So as we watch nightly reports of angry Americans with their signs and noisy protests near Ground Zero<\/a>, I wonder.<\/p>\n

I wonder how many of them know they are attempting to persecute an already persecuted people?<\/p>\n

I wonder how many of these sign carriers are Christians.\u00a0 Maybe Baptists?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They came to this country searching for religious freedom.\u00a0 Those of similar but not identical faith considered them to be a threat to the “pure faith”. It wasn’t long before they were told that their type of religion would not …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-perspective","category-race-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}