Do you think religion shouldn't use as a political argument ?
- Thread starter Johan
- Start date
You silly twat. It's more about Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Dominionism, you slaaaaaaaaag!
Sam Fisher
Banned
Yep.
History has proven time after time that when religion is a strong determining factor in day to day community events people make horrible twisted decisions. Be it Christian, Mormon, Muslum, whatever citizens become religiously motivated not community motivated. Spanish inquisition, Salem witch burnings, Christians being fed to the lions, Mormons being drivin into Utah and on and on and on. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Sam Fisher
Banned
This country was founded on Christian beliefs.
The United States of America is the only country in history to have defined itself as Judeo-Christian. While the Western world has consisted of many Christian countries and consists today of many secular countries, only America has called itself Judeo-Christian. America is also unique in that it has always combined secular government with a society based on religious values.
But what does "Judeo-Christian" mean? We need to know. Along with the belief in liberty — as opposed to, for example, the European belief in equality, the Muslim belief in theocracy, and the Eastern belief in social conformity — Judeo-Christian values are what distinguish America from all other countries. That is why American coins feature these two messages: "In G-d we trust" and "Liberty."
Yet, for all its importance and its repeated mention, the term is not widely understood. It urgently needs to be because it is under ferocious assault, and if we do not understand it, we will be unable to defend it. And if we cannot defend it, America will become as amoral as France, Germany, Russia, et al.
First, Judeo-Christian America has differed from Christian countries in Europe in at least two important ways. One is that the Christians who founded America saw themselves as heirs to the Hebrew Bible, as much as to theirs. And even more importantly, they strongly identified with the Jews.
For example, Thomas Jefferson wanted the design of the seal of the United States to depict the Jews leaving Egypt. Just as the Hebrews left Egypt and its values, Americans left Europe and its values (if only those who admire Jefferson would continue to take his advice).
Founders and other early Americans probably studied Hebrew, the language of the Jewish Bible at least as much as Greek, the language of the New. Yale, founded in 1701, adopted a Hebrew insignia, and Hebrew was compulsory at Harvard until 1787. The words on the Liberty Bell, "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land . . . ," are from the Torah. Vast numbers of Americans took Hebrew names — like Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather (kattan in Hebrew means "little one" or "younger").
The consequences included a strong Hebrew Bible view of the world — meaning, in part, a strong sense of fighting for earthly justice, an emphasis on laws, a belief in a judging, as well as a loving and forgiving, G-d, and a belief in the chosenness of the Jews which America identified with.
The significance of this belief in American chosenness cannot be overstated. It accounts for the mission that Americans have uniquely felt called to — to spread liberty in the world.
This sense of mission is why more Americans have died for the liberty of others than any other nation's soldiers.
It is why those who today most identify with the Judeo-Christian essence of America are more likely to believe in the moral worthiness of dying to liberate countries — not only Europe, but Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. That is why America stands alone in protecting two little countries threatened with extinction, Israel and Taiwan. That is why conservative Americans are more likely to believe in American exceptionalism — in not seeking, as President Bush put it, a "permission slip" from the United Nations, let alone from Europe.
The second meaning of Judeo-Christian is a belief in the biblical G-d of Israel, in His Ten Commandments and His biblical moral laws. It is a belief in universal, not relative, morality. It is a belief that America must answer morally to this G-d, not to the mortal, usually venal, governments of the world.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values lead the fight against redefining marriage. We believe that a pillar of Judeo-Christian values is to encourage the man-woman sexual and marital ideal, and to provide children with the opportunity to benefit from the unique gifts that a man and a woman give a child, gifts that are never replicable by two men alone or two women.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values are unmoved by the idea that the war in Iraq is moral if Germany, France, China and Russia say so, but immoral if they oppose it. We ask first what G-d and the Bible would say about liberating Iraq, not what Syria and other members of the U.N. Security Council say.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values believe that war, while always tragic, is on more than a few occasions a moral duty. Nothing "Judeo" ever sanctioned pacifism. Of course, the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah yearned for the day that nations will beat their swords into plowshares. But another Hebrew Prophet, Joel, who is never cited by those who wish to read the secular value of pacifism into the Bible, said precisely the opposite: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!'"
And that is why those who want Judeo-Christian values to disappear from American public life affirm multiculturalism, seek to remove mention of G-d from all public life, and make Christmas a private, not a national, holiday.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/prager_2004_03_30_04.php3
The United States of America is the only country in history to have defined itself as Judeo-Christian. While the Western world has consisted of many Christian countries and consists today of many secular countries, only America has called itself Judeo-Christian. America is also unique in that it has always combined secular government with a society based on religious values.
But what does "Judeo-Christian" mean? We need to know. Along with the belief in liberty — as opposed to, for example, the European belief in equality, the Muslim belief in theocracy, and the Eastern belief in social conformity — Judeo-Christian values are what distinguish America from all other countries. That is why American coins feature these two messages: "In G-d we trust" and "Liberty."
Yet, for all its importance and its repeated mention, the term is not widely understood. It urgently needs to be because it is under ferocious assault, and if we do not understand it, we will be unable to defend it. And if we cannot defend it, America will become as amoral as France, Germany, Russia, et al.
First, Judeo-Christian America has differed from Christian countries in Europe in at least two important ways. One is that the Christians who founded America saw themselves as heirs to the Hebrew Bible, as much as to theirs. And even more importantly, they strongly identified with the Jews.
For example, Thomas Jefferson wanted the design of the seal of the United States to depict the Jews leaving Egypt. Just as the Hebrews left Egypt and its values, Americans left Europe and its values (if only those who admire Jefferson would continue to take his advice).
Founders and other early Americans probably studied Hebrew, the language of the Jewish Bible at least as much as Greek, the language of the New. Yale, founded in 1701, adopted a Hebrew insignia, and Hebrew was compulsory at Harvard until 1787. The words on the Liberty Bell, "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land . . . ," are from the Torah. Vast numbers of Americans took Hebrew names — like Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather (kattan in Hebrew means "little one" or "younger").
The consequences included a strong Hebrew Bible view of the world — meaning, in part, a strong sense of fighting for earthly justice, an emphasis on laws, a belief in a judging, as well as a loving and forgiving, G-d, and a belief in the chosenness of the Jews which America identified with.
The significance of this belief in American chosenness cannot be overstated. It accounts for the mission that Americans have uniquely felt called to — to spread liberty in the world.
This sense of mission is why more Americans have died for the liberty of others than any other nation's soldiers.
It is why those who today most identify with the Judeo-Christian essence of America are more likely to believe in the moral worthiness of dying to liberate countries — not only Europe, but Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. That is why America stands alone in protecting two little countries threatened with extinction, Israel and Taiwan. That is why conservative Americans are more likely to believe in American exceptionalism — in not seeking, as President Bush put it, a "permission slip" from the United Nations, let alone from Europe.
The second meaning of Judeo-Christian is a belief in the biblical G-d of Israel, in His Ten Commandments and His biblical moral laws. It is a belief in universal, not relative, morality. It is a belief that America must answer morally to this G-d, not to the mortal, usually venal, governments of the world.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values lead the fight against redefining marriage. We believe that a pillar of Judeo-Christian values is to encourage the man-woman sexual and marital ideal, and to provide children with the opportunity to benefit from the unique gifts that a man and a woman give a child, gifts that are never replicable by two men alone or two women.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values are unmoved by the idea that the war in Iraq is moral if Germany, France, China and Russia say so, but immoral if they oppose it. We ask first what G-d and the Bible would say about liberating Iraq, not what Syria and other members of the U.N. Security Council say.
That is why those who most affirm Judeo-Christian values believe that war, while always tragic, is on more than a few occasions a moral duty. Nothing "Judeo" ever sanctioned pacifism. Of course, the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah yearned for the day that nations will beat their swords into plowshares. But another Hebrew Prophet, Joel, who is never cited by those who wish to read the secular value of pacifism into the Bible, said precisely the opposite: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!'"
And that is why those who want Judeo-Christian values to disappear from American public life affirm multiculturalism, seek to remove mention of G-d from all public life, and make Christmas a private, not a national, holiday.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/prager_2004_03_30_04.php3
Jesus himself never spoke about that.
He surrounded himself with outcasts : prostitutes, leprous, jewish tax colletors (such as mathex) for Romans, fishermen, zealots (such as Simon), etc...
"Thou shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13)
And, since you say God said you were right about this war "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (Exodus 20:7)
Depends on what judeo-christian values you're talking about. If you're talking about compassion, tolerance, sharing, charity, etc... then OK, keeps these values.
But if you're talking family, pro-life, homosexuality, and stigmatizing whose who do not share these values, then you should read your Bible more carefuly.
I've always found quite strange that, all over the world, the political parties who refers to God are often the most Right Wing ones, the ones which favors the rich and let the poors become poorer and poorer, which wanna repeal every government help to them.
"I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!" (Matthew 25:40)
Will E Worm
Conspiracy...
He did to.
Jesus was only around those people to teach them. 1 Corinthians 6:18
We can defend ourselves. We are to have weapons and Jesus did not come to bring peace.
Luke 22:36 Matthew 10:34
Hebrews 4:12 (KJV)
12: For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Those are Biblical values. Like it or not.
Learn from what Jesus said after Judas wanted to help the poor. More than likely steal the money.
Mark 14: 4-7 (KJV)
4 And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?
5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.
6 And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.
7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.
Mark 14: 10-11 (KJV)
10 And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them.
11 And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.
John 6:70 (KJV)
Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? That was Judas.
Then, legalise let's same-sex marriage so that gay would be able not to sin.He did to.
1 Corinthians 6:18
He let these outcasts come to him because they were true, unlike the hypocrites pharisians.
Luke 7:36-47
When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Luke 6:27-36
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.
Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Mark 10:19-25
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’”
And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.”
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
In fact, you're a perfect illustration of one of the reason that make me an atheist : When I look at what is said in the Bible, particulary the gospel and then look at how those who pretend to have made Faith be the main pilar of their life, the gap is so big...
People with a true faith and living by it should be more like Soeur Emmanuelle or Mother Theresa, not like Rick Santorum...
Kingfisher
Here Zombie, Zombie, Zombie...
Religion shouldn't be in politics at all. You know that whole pesky "Separation of Church and State" thing.
Sam Fisher
Banned
The True Meaning of Separation of Church and State
Our nation was predicated on unalienable rights with governance through family, church and community, each rightfully sovereign within its sphere. Human dignity, legal equality and personal freedom reflect biblical values imparted on Western Civilization, which retains these values in secular form while expunging their Author from public discourse.
Americans are frequently reminded of what the revisionists deem our greatest achievement: “Separation of Church and State.” Crosses are ripped down in parks. Prayer has been banished from schools and the ACLU rampages to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Moreover, “Separation of Church and State” is nowhere found in the Constitution or any other founding legislation. Our forefathers would never countenance the restrictions on religion exacted today.
The phrase “separation of church and state” was initially coined by Baptists striving for religious toleration in Virginia, whose official state religion was then Anglican (Episcopalian). Baptists thought government limitations against religion illegitimate. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson championed their cause.
The preamble in Act Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia (1786), affirms that “the Author of our Religion gave us our ‘free will.’” And that He “chose not to propagate it by coercions.” This legislation certainly did not diminish religious influence on government for it also provided stiff penalties for conducting business on the Sabbath.
Nor did the Constitution inhibit public displays of faith. At ratification, a majority of the thirteen several and sovereign states maintained official religions. The early Republic welcomed public worship. Church services were held in the U.S. Capitol and Treasury buildings every Sunday. The imagery in many federal buildings remains unmistakably biblical.
The day after the First Amendment’s passage, Congress proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. The inaugural Congress was largely comprised by those who drafted the Constitution. It reflects incredible arrogance to reconfigure the Bill of Rights into prohibiting religious displays on public grounds. Hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall of a county courthouse no more mandates religion than judges displaying the banner of their favorite sports team somehow equates to Congress establishing that team as preeminent.
Our forefathers never sought to evict the church from society. They recognized that the several states did not share uniform values. We lived and worshipped differently. The framers were a diverse bunch with wildly divergent opinions on many issues, but eliminating the very foundations of America’s heritage would have horrified them. On few issues was there more unanimity.
Where the French Revolution and its official policy of “De-Christianization” quickly devolved into bloodshed and oppression, here freedom flourished. Our independence was seen as the culmination of a march toward liberty, not a rejection of America’s historical cultural moorings. Our forbears embraced tradition and left local autonomy largely intact.
Schools, courts and the public square were often overtly Christian and had been since their colonial beginnings. Few Americans would have tolerated a coercive central government infringing on their rights to post religious symbols on local schools, courts or anywhere else.
Americans built society from the ground up. Many had fled oppression. The colonies instituted local self-government indigenously to confirm the rights resident in their persons and property. Few would have willingly been dispossessed by Washington of the very freedoms which they had just secured from London.
Here men could and did rise as their efforts merited. Commoners were unshackled from feudal paralysis and freed to find God individually. Both the economy and church thrived. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans intertwined individual liberty with vibrant faith. “It is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”
Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. None would have wished to upend the very basis for education, law or culture. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Americans understood freedom without morality quickly devolves into debauchery. Whether from sincere faith, or, prudence instilling an honest, law-abiding, responsible and hardworking populace, all esteemed biblical morality as the bedrock of self government. George Washington believed, “Religion and morality are indispensible supports” for “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
The phrase “separation between church and state” was reintroduced by former Klansman Hugo Black, historically one of our most liberal Supreme Court judges. In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Black invoked Thomas Jefferson stating, “The First Amendment has erected ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ . . . that wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
Thomas Jefferson thought differently. The Danbury Baptists wrote to him congratulating his election and objecting to the First Amendment. They thought it implied government dispensed what was not government’s to give. Jefferson agreed.
His reply clearly applied “Separation of Church and State” to the establishment and not to the free exercise of religion. As he expressed, what communities did and how they worshipped were not federal affairs. Jefferson later said the central government was “interdicted from intermeddling with religious institutions.” Such were state matters.
Freedom of religion was partly moral – protecting our most cherished liberty – and partly pragmatic. Religious animosity tears society asunder, particularly when church is affixed to government. With freedom of conscience assured, conflict becomes less likely. The First Amendment was an insightful compromise between church and state, federal and local authorities. The framers desired to avoid the controversies which engulfed Europe.
As James Madison warned in Federalist 10, “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; . . . A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, . . . ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power . . . divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.”
Thus the Constitution decreed that Washington had no occasion or authority to interject itself into matters as obviously local as doctrines of faith. Congress was not empowered to establish a church because the framers feared that concentrated power, whether favored religions, standing armies, banking monopolies, or an overarching federal government, invited tyranny.
Church and state were distinct in that the Federal Government could not elevate one denomination over others. Nor could government and its flawed inhabitants usurp divine authority by harnessing politics to the church. Faith is no civil contract, but a personal matter not to be profaned by politics.
State controlled churches frequently exploited this latent power for evil. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t originate in the Vatican, but the Castilian court. It was not of the church, but the king. By Philip II, Spain had the makings of the first police state infused with the ill-gotten moral authority of a tyrannical clergy.
Much of our Bill of Rights was meant to prevent dictatorships such as Cromwell’s, which married church and state in such manner as to mar many of the freedoms our forefathers sought to enshrine.
The framers witnessed the incessant wars of the mother continent and understood official churches and centralized power fomented abuses. Having two or three competing factions spurred struggles between the parties to secure power, but divesting authority to innumerable smaller jurisdictions without the prospect of any gaining control promoted peaceful freedom.
Episcopalians in Virginia would live amicably next to Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania or Baptists in their midst. None saw cause for contention because there was no threat that others would gain dominion over them or any prospect that they might gain such dominion themselves. Rivalry was unnecessary because “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Establishment has been redefined. Limitations on government have been altered into restrictions on religious expression, which clearly violates the amendment’s next clause: “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and third clause “abridging the freedom of speech.” Meanwhile, Washington publicly imposes politically correct secular religions like worshiping diversity or the environment.
Are our rights inalienable or contrivances from courts? Is government still limited or its power undefined? Is the state answerable to the people or are we but subjects? Do our rights descend from God or derive from man?
America must decide.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfla...-meaning-of-separation-of-church-and-state/3/
Our nation was predicated on unalienable rights with governance through family, church and community, each rightfully sovereign within its sphere. Human dignity, legal equality and personal freedom reflect biblical values imparted on Western Civilization, which retains these values in secular form while expunging their Author from public discourse.
Americans are frequently reminded of what the revisionists deem our greatest achievement: “Separation of Church and State.” Crosses are ripped down in parks. Prayer has been banished from schools and the ACLU rampages to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Moreover, “Separation of Church and State” is nowhere found in the Constitution or any other founding legislation. Our forefathers would never countenance the restrictions on religion exacted today.
The phrase “separation of church and state” was initially coined by Baptists striving for religious toleration in Virginia, whose official state religion was then Anglican (Episcopalian). Baptists thought government limitations against religion illegitimate. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson championed their cause.
The preamble in Act Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia (1786), affirms that “the Author of our Religion gave us our ‘free will.’” And that He “chose not to propagate it by coercions.” This legislation certainly did not diminish religious influence on government for it also provided stiff penalties for conducting business on the Sabbath.
Nor did the Constitution inhibit public displays of faith. At ratification, a majority of the thirteen several and sovereign states maintained official religions. The early Republic welcomed public worship. Church services were held in the U.S. Capitol and Treasury buildings every Sunday. The imagery in many federal buildings remains unmistakably biblical.
The day after the First Amendment’s passage, Congress proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. The inaugural Congress was largely comprised by those who drafted the Constitution. It reflects incredible arrogance to reconfigure the Bill of Rights into prohibiting religious displays on public grounds. Hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall of a county courthouse no more mandates religion than judges displaying the banner of their favorite sports team somehow equates to Congress establishing that team as preeminent.
Our forefathers never sought to evict the church from society. They recognized that the several states did not share uniform values. We lived and worshipped differently. The framers were a diverse bunch with wildly divergent opinions on many issues, but eliminating the very foundations of America’s heritage would have horrified them. On few issues was there more unanimity.
Where the French Revolution and its official policy of “De-Christianization” quickly devolved into bloodshed and oppression, here freedom flourished. Our independence was seen as the culmination of a march toward liberty, not a rejection of America’s historical cultural moorings. Our forbears embraced tradition and left local autonomy largely intact.
Schools, courts and the public square were often overtly Christian and had been since their colonial beginnings. Few Americans would have tolerated a coercive central government infringing on their rights to post religious symbols on local schools, courts or anywhere else.
Americans built society from the ground up. Many had fled oppression. The colonies instituted local self-government indigenously to confirm the rights resident in their persons and property. Few would have willingly been dispossessed by Washington of the very freedoms which they had just secured from London.
Here men could and did rise as their efforts merited. Commoners were unshackled from feudal paralysis and freed to find God individually. Both the economy and church thrived. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans intertwined individual liberty with vibrant faith. “It is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”
Even non-Christian founders thought religion essential. None would have wished to upend the very basis for education, law or culture. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Americans understood freedom without morality quickly devolves into debauchery. Whether from sincere faith, or, prudence instilling an honest, law-abiding, responsible and hardworking populace, all esteemed biblical morality as the bedrock of self government. George Washington believed, “Religion and morality are indispensible supports” for “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
The phrase “separation between church and state” was reintroduced by former Klansman Hugo Black, historically one of our most liberal Supreme Court judges. In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Black invoked Thomas Jefferson stating, “The First Amendment has erected ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ . . . that wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
Thomas Jefferson thought differently. The Danbury Baptists wrote to him congratulating his election and objecting to the First Amendment. They thought it implied government dispensed what was not government’s to give. Jefferson agreed.
His reply clearly applied “Separation of Church and State” to the establishment and not to the free exercise of religion. As he expressed, what communities did and how they worshipped were not federal affairs. Jefferson later said the central government was “interdicted from intermeddling with religious institutions.” Such were state matters.
Freedom of religion was partly moral – protecting our most cherished liberty – and partly pragmatic. Religious animosity tears society asunder, particularly when church is affixed to government. With freedom of conscience assured, conflict becomes less likely. The First Amendment was an insightful compromise between church and state, federal and local authorities. The framers desired to avoid the controversies which engulfed Europe.
As James Madison warned in Federalist 10, “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; . . . A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, . . . ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power . . . divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.”
Thus the Constitution decreed that Washington had no occasion or authority to interject itself into matters as obviously local as doctrines of faith. Congress was not empowered to establish a church because the framers feared that concentrated power, whether favored religions, standing armies, banking monopolies, or an overarching federal government, invited tyranny.
Church and state were distinct in that the Federal Government could not elevate one denomination over others. Nor could government and its flawed inhabitants usurp divine authority by harnessing politics to the church. Faith is no civil contract, but a personal matter not to be profaned by politics.
State controlled churches frequently exploited this latent power for evil. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t originate in the Vatican, but the Castilian court. It was not of the church, but the king. By Philip II, Spain had the makings of the first police state infused with the ill-gotten moral authority of a tyrannical clergy.
Much of our Bill of Rights was meant to prevent dictatorships such as Cromwell’s, which married church and state in such manner as to mar many of the freedoms our forefathers sought to enshrine.
The framers witnessed the incessant wars of the mother continent and understood official churches and centralized power fomented abuses. Having two or three competing factions spurred struggles between the parties to secure power, but divesting authority to innumerable smaller jurisdictions without the prospect of any gaining control promoted peaceful freedom.
Episcopalians in Virginia would live amicably next to Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania or Baptists in their midst. None saw cause for contention because there was no threat that others would gain dominion over them or any prospect that they might gain such dominion themselves. Rivalry was unnecessary because “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Establishment has been redefined. Limitations on government have been altered into restrictions on religious expression, which clearly violates the amendment’s next clause: “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and third clause “abridging the freedom of speech.” Meanwhile, Washington publicly imposes politically correct secular religions like worshiping diversity or the environment.
Are our rights inalienable or contrivances from courts? Is government still limited or its power undefined? Is the state answerable to the people or are we but subjects? Do our rights descend from God or derive from man?
America must decide.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfla...-meaning-of-separation-of-church-and-state/3/
Sam Fisher
Banned
The host committee for the Democratic National Convention is raising a number of eyebrows after choosing to proceed with featuring Islamic “Jumah” prayers for two hours on the Friday before its convention, though Democrats earlier denied a Catholic cardinal’s request to say a prayer at the same event.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/dnc...s-blessing-and-you-wont-believe-whos-invited/
Will E Worm
Conspiracy...
It would still be sin.
The state should not be in anyone's marriage.
In fact, you're a perfect illustration of one of the reason that make me an atheist : When I look at what is said in the Bible, particulary the gospel and then look at how those who pretend to have made Faith be the main pilar of their life, the gap is so big...
People with a true faith and living by it should be more like Soeur Emmanuelle or Mother Theresa, not like Rick Santorum...
You're an Atheist because you do not believe or follow the Bible the way it is written. :hatsoff:
They were nuns. Nuns are not in the Bible.
Deepcover
Closed Account
I see
The state SHOULD BE in anyone's marriage. Religion could be in marriage if people want it
Thank God, we French have passed the 1905 Law on the Separations of Churches and State
I think I follow the Bible better than you and many other Reps, even If it is not my intention since I do not care about the Bible...
Neither the Pope or the Cardinals, Bishops and Priests...
Will E Worm
Conspiracy...
No, the state has no right to be in anyone's marriage. That is between the two getting married and their God.
Not at all.
I know. Neither is Rabbi. Except the part where we are told not to call any man rabbi.
Matthew 23:8 (KJV)
8:*But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.
However, Preacher is used multiple times. Here's two examples:
Romans 10:14 (KJV)
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
2 Timothy 1:11 (KJV)
Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.
Actually, priest is in the Bible. Just not the way the Catholics use it.
Sam Fisher
Banned
Well, you Democrats got your wish. They just voted at on the floor of the DNC and, the word God has been removed and, Jerusalem is not being recognized as the Capitol of Israel.
Proud of yourselves, are ya?
Proud of yourselves, are ya?
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