Dagwood said:
The last thing this country needs is a preacher as president, baptist or otherwise.
Does that mean that the USA and/or God made one or two mistakes in this, in the past with the elections of
Presidents John Quincy Adams in 1824 and
James A. Garfield in 1880?
How about John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaratiuon of Independence, the 6
th President of Princeton, and a Presbyterian minister? Should he be discounted, as a 'preacher'?
While it is true that
John Quincy Adams may not have technically been a preacher, he did, in fact, serve as a Vice-President and President of the American Bible Society for many years. (BTW, the first
Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court;
President of the Continental Congress from Dec. 10, 1778 to Sept. 27, 1779; and the author of 5 of the 85 essays known as Federalist Papers, plus a bunch of other important stuff,
John Jay, also served as a VP of the ABS, and Presidents
Rutherford B. Hayes and
Benjamin Harrison also served as officers of the ABS. I realize I am getting a bit sidetracked, but the founder and first President of the ABS,
Elias Boudinot, also was
President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation from Nov. 4, 1782 to Nov. 2, 1783.)
A short look into many of the almost forgotten facts, about the lives of these, in many cases, lesser-known individuals is a fascinating and informative study, and, personally, I highly recommend it.
James A. Garfield was an active minister and elder for many years in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and was an extremely erudite individual, even to the point of being able to translate something spoken in English into Greek and Latin, and write it simultaneously with both hands. Interestingly he was also the only individual in History to be a US Representative, US Senator-elect (Nov. 2 1880), and President-elect of the US (officially from Dec.1, 1880), all at the same time, from Nov. 2, 1880 until he relinquished his Senatorship to be. Interestingly enough also, he would (after Chester A. Arthur) be succeeded in the next election by
Rutherford B. Hayes as the President.
Upon being elected President,
James A. Garfield relinquished his eldership supposedly saying,
"I resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States."
And whether or not one agrees with the policies and acts of a particular individual in the high office of President of the United States, one cannot accurately speak of Presidents such as
Calvin Coolidge,
Jimmy Carter,
George W. Bush, and
Abraham Lincoln, to name but a few more, apart from their 'Christian ideas'.
I have the highest personal, if not necessarily political, regard for President
Jimmy Carter, who has been a Sunday School teacher for well over 60 years, including during the time he was Governor of Georgia and President of the United States.
I firmly believe in "the separation of church and state"!
I do not believe in "the separation of God and country"!
Ed