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The Tulsa Beacon

 

Rosemary Durham

America must have freethinkers who hold to their values

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] To build the framework for the original teachers and settler-leaders to the Indian Territory, we saw that President Thomas Jefferson was an avid supporter of church schools. That caused us to back up for a look at the foundations of the government. Many…

Was Ben Franklin a Deist? For a while

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why were Presidents Jefferson and Washington, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, with other early political architects called Deist? We saw earlier that all the founding colonies had requirements and oaths definitively affirming traditional Protestant beliefs and the colonies expelled those not advocating the prescribed practices….

Did President Jefferson promote religious education?

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Did President Jefferson promote religious education? That brings up the bigger question. Was our country founded as a Christian nation? We have seen in earlier editions that Thomas Jefferson was an ardent financial supporter and advocate of education for Native American groups, who…

Jefferson and Ben Franklin did not want a state religion

Tulsa Beacon

Jefferson the Reformer [Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] How did Thomas Jefferson’s religion influence our local politics? William Curtis (1901) regaled with the story of an educated stranger who recounts his meeting Jefferson at an inn. When he spoke law, I thought he was a lawyer; when he…

What was the outcome of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase?

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] What are the consequences of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase? While the ink was still drying on the Purchase of 1803, the first Native Americans crossed the wide, swift, muddy Mississippi. Why? The Treaty of Tellico forced them out of Tennessee. They began the…

What would it be like without the Louisiana Purchase?

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Thomas Jefferson’s Purchase of the Louisiana Territory significant? Even Jefferson could not begin to comprehend what would happen in the next 30 years. In their later years of life Jefferson wrote in a letter to his friend and political enemy, former…

Thomas Jefferson was a true friend of Native Americans

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Thomas Jefferson significant as a friend of Native Americans? We tend to think of history as a sequence of unrelated events, but it is the confluence of numerous parallel ventures. Most unconsciously think that history began the day they were born,…

19th Century pastors believed in ‘God, guns and guts’

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Brainerd Mission, Tennessee, significant to our culture and religion? Samuel Austin and Ann Worcester were sent there after his graduation and ordination in 1825. The young couple were going to the cultural home of his associate and right-hand Elias Boudinot, born…

Samuel Austin Worcester, the printer, played a key role

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Sequoyah deciphered the Cherokee language, but how was his artistry moved from calligraphy to print in newspaper, books, and pamphlets? We have already discussed articles relevant to Samuel Austin Worcester at Union Mission and his talented, storied grand-daughter Alice M. Robertson. But there…

Sequoyah, the untrained polymath, had a great impact

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] How does an untrained person, who cannot read, does not know an alphabet, and speaks only one language, create a written language to educate his people? Sequoyah was a self-taught linguist. In his first language attempt, he tried to use pictographs for each…