I Did Some Genealogy
I am descended from immigrants. Only a very few of us here are not. Some of my ancestors originally lived in eastern Prussia that is now part of western Poland. They lived in Reinfeld, Prussia. And they were called “Old Lutherans” aka Evangelical Lutherans.
Between 1830 and 1840 King William Frederick III of Prussia took on the task of exerting control over Protestant beliefs in his country, in an attempt to unify all Protestant beliefs under one central belief system that became known as The Church of the Prussian Union.
What a great idea, huh? If we can all agree to the same religious tenets we can stop arguing and fighting religious wars and we all prosper.
Evangelical Lutherans, however, were not impressed. They were unwilling to accept new creeds let alone abandon ones that they accepted just so they could all just get along.
They disagreed, by God.
After a couple of decades of living in a regime that decided what religious tenets to believe and how to believe them, my ancestors decided, along with their fellow parishioners, to relocate to America where the rumor was that there was a constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice the religion of their choice.
So as a direct descendent of these persecuted people, I am here, in part, due to narrow-minded religious persecution by those in power.
Things are a little different now, but not by much.
Today, religion in America can be found in anything, and it has so many new uses. Some use it to decide how to vote and some use it to decide what pillows to buy.
And some don’t see any relevance that religion has in politics at all, and they buy pillows that are the most comfortable, and not necessarily the ones made by the My Pillow Guy.
Like the Prussian Protestants of the 19th century, we are still religiously divided, but in a whole new way that even the 1st Amendment can’t fix.
Because we still have Prussian kings among us that believe that their religious beliefs trump (sorry) all others and it is their duty to enforce them, even on the non-religious.
God save us. Or not.