As you've probably already read or heard, yet another member of the Virginia delegation to the US Congress has gone off his chum in reference to the subject of foreign types with foreign belief systems.
Here is my response. It's been sent to the congressman's office and a few local news outlets. I thought you might get a kick out of it.
Dear Congressman Goode:
I read with interest your letter to constituents concerned with the use of the Koran in a swearing-in ceremony, and have done a bit of research. You will be proud to know there is evidence that you are not the first of your family to stand firm in defense of the True Faith of Our Fathers. This letter to constituents, authored three centuries ago, appears to be written by your distant ancestor (albeit one whose name-spelling was somewhat different, but being the descendent of an Irish immigrant from County Antrim who spelt his name, in 1793, "Daraugh," I know this sometimes happens). Read, enjoy and feel free to validate my research of the role of the state in religious belief systems in our fair Republic and the colonial possessions which gave it birth.
Very truly yours, Mark Dorroh Richmond, VA
From the Desk of His Majesty's Sheriff,
Prince George County
Virginia Colony
December 12, 1706
Thank you for your recent communication. When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will use Our Blessed Church's King James Bible and none other. I do not subscribe to using any other version of The Revealed Word, for is not our Gracious King the titular head of our own Church of England, Ordained by Bloodline and by the approval of God Almighty? Did some misguided lackwit repeal the Divine Right of Kings whilst we slept?
Is not His Gracious Majesty the final authority over all matters, secular and spiritual?
And yet we hear of those who seek public office who subscribe to neither the King James Bible nor the doctrinal purity of our Church of England; even in this fair county are we forced to share with them the air we breathe, our children's faith and our slaves, these atheists and devil-worshippers who say faith is merely a matter of personal choice (!), that the state must have no role in matters of personal conscience!
What godless madness is this? Are we to tolerate these serial heresies, and in our own County?
Nay, say I, and nay say all right-thinking Prince George subjects of His Most Gracious Majesty!
For it follows that if one loves one's Blessed Sovereign, one must love one's Blessed Sovereign's Bible and Church, does it not? And is to not love one's Sovereign, Bible and Church not treason most foul?
Verily, it cannot be otherwise!
Unless we stop the immigration of these heretics, these Quaking so-called "Friends" who possess not slaves, a proper church nor doctrine consistent with the only true version of the Bible, we shall, by the end of this century, have many more Quakers amongst us, perverting the Holy Word and making us sick and weak with their heresies!
And speak not to me of these so-called "Baptists," for they are greater heretics yet than even their Quaker co-conspirators! In the foolishness of their self-made faith, they claim their church has its origins not in the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, but in the teachings of an wandering prophet of the Judean wilderness, a man who met Our Savior once, baptized him, and was not even present at Golgotha when the miracles of the Passion occurred!
Shall we tolerate these madmen, these breakers of the faith, these witches, warlocks and their godless spawn?
Never, say I! Never so long as I am His Majesty's Sheriff!
Verily, we must run these dangerous lunatics over the borders of our fair county, send them to perdition (or at least New Kent County) and free ourselves of their pernicious beliefs and their anti-English ways. The Ten Commandments and "In God We Trust" are on the wall in my office. A Baptist student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about St. John the Baptist. My response was clear, "As long as I have the honor of keeping the King's Law in this county, no mention of your mystical prophet is going to be on the wall of my office."
Then I ran him across the border to New Kent County. For this, by the grace of our Sovereign, I was rewarded with a goodly measure of choice tobacco, for such is the per-head bounty for removing heretics from His Majesty's County of Prince George.*
Let this be the way of things henceforth! Otherwise, within a few hundred years, we may well be inundated with these "Baptists" and their heretical ways!
Thank you again for your letters and thoughts.
God Save His Gracious Majesty and his Church of England for all time!
Sincerely yours, V.H. Goodie,Sr., County of Prince George, Virginia Colony
* Source: The Prince George-Hopewell Story by Francis Earle Lutz - Richmond, 1957. Copies may be accessed at The Library of Virginia.
