Separation of Church and State

[PetsTheCatfish]

Treaty with Tripoli(1797, passed by the senate EDIT: not currently in place, whoops)

Drafted by George Washington

 

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

 

I assume we'd be a Christian nation if any sort of religious one mainly because we(US citizens in general) are mostly Christian.

 

Then the first amendment-

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

 

Which means that congress will not make any laws that would give any religion any sort of accreditation and therefore recognization as more valid then all the others.

[Buffy]

I personally don't care if "God" is on the money or not, or if it is in the pledge or not. I do enjoy Christmas, and I think that it is a great idea to have it as a national holiday, but we should not have to hedge about the reason - the vast majority of the country celebrates this holiday, therefore the government recognizes this holiday and closes. But I reject the argument that the mention of God in the pledge or on the money, or having a government holiday with religious roots (that can say so) is a violation of the First Amendment.

This is getting into feelings, and I think that's just as legitimate of an angle as the legal one discussed in the last few posts, and I'd like to expound upon it.

 

I was brought up in a non-practicing but nominally Protestant family almost all of whom could be termed at least agnostic. Though various marriages--including my own--several of us are adoptive Jews, and this has made me incredibly sensitive to the very subtle discrimination that our society has towards non-Christians, no matter how many references there are to our "Judeo-Christian Heritage."

 

Now you'd expect me to not necessarily be in the camp that disgrees with the proposition that "most of us are religious, therefore references to God are not offensive," but inherent in Christmas--especially with the hate-filled ravings of O'Reilly and others about the "War on Christmas"--is a specific bias towards belief in "Jesus as the Savior" which Jews do not share, and it comes off as not-so-subtle anti-semitism when its termed as "what do you have against Jesus" even among people who do not consider themselves prejudiced.

 

That's precisely why I do have strongly protective personal feelings of understanding of those who are avowedly atheist, because I can understand how "innocent and non-prejudiced personal opinions" can be in fact very hurtful, to the point of making people outcasts.

 

A case to illustrate: my ex was the only Jew in his elementary school class, and back then (H/T to Craig for the historical background above), it was still common to have Christmas trees and carols in school. Just before the "Christmas Break" the teacher asked "does any one here not have a Christmas tree at home?" My ex, cherubic little 8 year old he was at the time raised his hand. The next day his mother was called into school for an elaborate presentation of the tree to this poor family that could not afford one, and there was no end of emarrasment when she had to simply exclaim to the assembled crowd: "but of course we don't have a Christmas Tree! We're Jewish!" I wish this was a made up story but it actually happened.

 

I have to say I get *especially* insensed when some extreme manipulators--and their unthinking followers--try to make all of this somehow "oppression" of the most privileged ethnic group in America:

 

That's what we call Chutzpah.

 

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech holom asher kidshanu b'mitzvotov, :)

Buffy

[CraigD]

In my super-simplified, IANAL analysis, the current legal and extralegal status of the issue of allowing or requiring the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is public schools and other gatherings reduces to the following:

• The US Government can’t pass laws require (or prohibiting) it
  
• Teachers, school administrators, and event organizers aren’t officers of the US government, so can
  
• Requirements imposed by teachers, administrators, and organizers aren’t laws, so people can’t be legally required to follow them
  
• As nearly all of the people affected by the issue are children, the in loco parentis principle of common law (predating US legal code and assumed valid) requires they pretty much do whatever any teacher, administrator, or other adult in authority tells them to, Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned.
  

To this inexpert analysis, I add a bit of folksy wisdom of my own. This necessitates the use of an important folk quasilegal term, the a**h*le:

• In loco parentis is intended to safeguard the wellbeing of children, so should be reserved for consequential matters, such as the prohibition running with scissors, and the requirement to learn to read
  
• An adult attempting to compel a child to comply with a rule as inconsequential as standing for the Pledge or including the words “under God” when reciting it, is an a**h*le
  
• It’s difficult to legislate, regulate, litigate, or legally interpret a**h*lery out of existence
  
• Adults who attempt to litigate an end to a**h*lery are themselves a**h*les.
  
• Learning to tolerate a**h*lery is a valuable life lesson, so, in likely a unintended manner, in loco parentis-abusing a**h*les are doing their child charges/victims a service
  

Those of us who attended US Public schools likely have considerable experience with this dynamic. I, for example, recited the Pledge in public school about a couple thousand times. By my pre-teens, I tended to substitute my own, alternative phrasings for parts of it I found objectionable, from the ever-popular “under God <- “under Satan” replacement, to substituting the names of whatever diety I was able to research up, to a respectful silence. I was a Boy Scout, so recited the Pledge about once a week at meetings. Because I liked the Scouts, I chose to interpret “under God” as traditional, along the lines of the Kipling-inspired animal pagan religious dogma with which scouting was (and in my most recent adult experience, still is) fraught, and spoke the words loudly and with conviction. Folk wisdom holds that those who cut up in Scout meetings are a**h*les.

 

This is not to imply that all issues of separation of church and state are inconsequential, and the domain of folk wisdom.

 

At present, I believe the single most significant issue involving separation of church and state involves the present US domestic and foreign policy requiring the exclusive, preferential, or equal teaching of sexual abstinence in educational and health service programs addressing pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention. “Abstinence only” programs are not shown by well-controlled scientific research to be as effective as other approaches, such as ones encouraging condom use. The motivation for these approaches appears to be religious, not scientific. By favoring these programs with funding and regulations, the US government is, IMHO, both violating the First Amendment, being less effective in preventing and in some cases causing preventable injury and death. I will vote against political candidates who support abstinence-only education, and hope that a large majority of my fellow Americans will also, reversing the regulations and policies put in place by previous and present officials that promote this harmful approach.

[FredFlash]

...the Danbury letter was inspired by political movement in Connecticut that led the writers to believe that the state of Connecticut was going to declare an official religion.

 

That's a lie being spread by Counterfeit Christians. Read the letter the Danbury Baptist wrote to Jefferson if you want to know what they were complaining about.

 

Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious

 

liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter

 

between God and individuals--that no man ought to suffer in name,

 

person, or effects on account of his religious opinions--that the

 

legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to

 

punish the man who works ill to his neighbors; But, sir, our

 

constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter

 

together with the law made coincident therewith, were adopted as

 

the basis of our government, at the time of our revolution; and

 

such had been our laws and usages, and such still are; that

 

religion is considered as the first object of legislation; and

 

therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of

 

the state) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable

 

rights; and

these favors we receive at the expense of such

 

degrading acknowledgements as are inconsistent with the rights of

 

freemen.

It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those who seek

 

after power and gain under the pretense of government and

 

religion should reproach their fellow men--should reproach their

 

order magistrate, as a enemy of religion, law, and good order,

 

because he will not, dare not, assume the prerogatives of Jehovah

 

and make laws to govern the kingdom of Christ.

 

The Baptist were complaining about the "degrading acknowledgments" required to obtain their "religious privileges." Now, go find out what the "degrading acknowledgments" were, and report back to us.

[FredFlash]

Establishment is also both a verb and a noun. There is the act of establishing and an entity referred to as an establishment. Some I have discussed this with contend that only the act of establishing is prohibited, that it is OK for the government to endorse one belief over another.

 

The first thing one needs to understand is that the First Amendment, from the view of James Madison and the others who supported adoption of the Constitution, added nothing to, or took anything from, the Constitution.

 

The Constitution established a limited government which possessed only the powers expressly granted to it in the document. It was the non-delegation of power over religion to the Federal Government that set up the separation of religion from the power of the U. S. Government.

 

The framers foolishly added the no religious test clause which many interpreted to mean that the government had general authority over religion, and that the no religious test clause was an exception to the government's general authority over religion.

 

It comes up quite a bit in debates on the Pledge since the phrase "under God" is literally and endorsement of theist belief.

 

"Under God" in the Pledge could reasonably be considered an establishment, by law, of religion. The opinion/sentiment/belief that men should be subject to the supervision, instruction, influence, authority, rule, or control of God is "religion."

[FredFlash]

I have always viewed that not as an endorsement, but as a recognition of the theist beliefs of the citizens.

 

A recognition of religion is an establishment of religion, according to the great Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story.

 

I see a difference between recognition and endorsement, and it is one I choose to accept it as a valid compromise for the sake of resolving an otherwise contentious issue.

 

There is no such thing as a valid compromise of the rights of conscience.

 

The money is the same thing. If "God" has no meaning to a person, then "In God We Trust" has no meaning either. For a true atheist protesting "E Pluribus Unum" would be just as valid, since it is nothing but another meaningless phrase. Because atheists choose to only protest the mention of a God that is by their own account meaningless, they define themselves as anti-religion when they do not protest all meaningless words as fervently.

 

Atheists do not consider the word "God" to be without meaning, dude.

 

I personally don't care if "God" is on the money or not, or if it is in the pledge or not.

 

Since you have no problem with civil jurisdiction over our duties to trust God and submit to his authority, why don't we just surrender all of our duties to God to the advisory jurisdiction of Congress. Let's establish a U. S. Bureau of Religion to study religious questions and issue advice to the people regarding religion?

[FredFlash]

The peculiarly ambiguous language of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights is enough to make one suspect the Framers of a perverse desire to sow uncertainty and perpetual debate! Though unrelated to matters church (at least most churches), The Second Amendment is arguable one of the most syntactically tortured sentence known to humankind

 

You will find our Amendments to the Constitution calculated merely to amuse, or rather to deceive.

 

Source: U. S. Representative Thomas Tudor Tucker (S. Carolina) to St. George Tucker, 2 October 1789, Roberts Autograph Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania.

[FredFlash]

That's a lie being spread by Counterfeit Christians. Read the letter the Danbury Baptist wrote to Jefferson if you want to know what they were complaining about.

 

Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious

 

liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter

 

between God and individuals--that no man ought to suffer in name,

 

person, or effects on account of his religious opinions--that the

 

legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to

 

punish the man who works ill to his neighbors; But, sir, our

 

constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter

 

together with the law made coincident therewith, were adopted as

 

the basis of our government, at the time of our revolution; and

 

such had been our laws and usages, and such still are; that

 

religion is considered as the first object of legislation; and

 

therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of

 

the state) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable

 

rights; and

these favors we receive at the expense of such

 

degrading acknowledgements as are inconsistent with the rights of

 

freemen.

It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those who seek

 

after power and gain under the pretense of government and

 

religion should reproach their fellow men--should reproach their

 

order magistrate, as a enemy of religion, law, and good order,

 

because he will not, dare not, assume the prerogatives of Jehovah

 

and make laws to govern the kingdom of Christ.

 

The Baptist were complaining about the "degrading acknowledgments" required to obtain their "religious privileges." Now, go find out what the "degrading acknowledgments" were, and report back to us.

 

I read your silence to mean that you have not been able to figure out what the "degrading acknowledgments" were.

[TheBigDog]

I read your silence to mean that you have not been able to figure out what the "degrading acknowledgments" were.

Read my silence to mean that I am a full employee, full time student, full time husband, full time parent with more important things to do than amuse you by jumping through the hoops you hold up for me. I will get to this in good time, or perhaps instead of arrogantly baiting for answers you could supply the information in question and move the conversation forward.

 

I stand by my remark that the Baptists were concerned about a political movement to create a state religion, and I am continuing to try and find documentation of it. Since it never happened, finding the hot political drama from Connetticut in the early 1800's is not easy to come by.

 

Bill

[C1ay]

If it helps I posted the entirety of the Danbury Baptist's letter and Jefferson's reply in the 15th post of this thread. The primary concern of the Danbury Baptists was the lack of any constitutional protection prohibiting the States from making state laws respecting an establishment of religion. Jefferson explained that he understood but his hands were tied since he had only the powers authorized by Congress and Congress was inhibited from religious acts by the 1st amendment.

 

This was prior to the fourteenth amendment which would later be interpreted as extending the Bill of Rights of the people to the States thus preventing the States from passing laws that interferred with the rights of the citizens guaranteed by the Constitution.

 

One must remember that the government of Connecticut and it's Fundemental Orders were drafted by the Puritans which saw no difference between church and state. Their government was born of their religious belief and created just to protect their own religious convictions.

[FredFlash]

Read my silence to mean that I am a full employee, full time student, full time husband, full time parent with more important things to do than amuse you by jumping through the hoops you hold up for me. I will get to this in good time, or perhaps instead of arrogantly baiting for answers you could supply the information in question and move the conversation forward.

 

The "degrading acknowledgments" were the certificates the Baptist had to execute and file to be exempt from the tithe imposed under Certificate Law of October 1791.

 

I stand by my remark that the Baptists were concerned about a political movement to create a state religion..

 

Have you been polluting your mind with the crap written by David Barton?

 

...and I am continuing to try and find documentation of it.

 

Jefferson, in his "Eternal Hostility Letter" to Ben Rush, may have been referring to an attempt to establish a national religion. However, the Baptists didn't mention it in their letter. I know of no other reference to the supposed attempt to set up a national religion. But, I have no doubt that there were those who would have supported such an establishment. New England was full of Satan Worshiping Calvinists.

 

Don't make the mistake of reading the Baptists' reference, in their letter to Jefferson, to "our ancient constitution" to be a reference to the U. S. Constitution. The "ancient constitution" is the Connecticut Charter of 1626. In 1801, the U. S. Constitution was only 13 years old.

[FredFlash]

…our constitution cites "one nation under God."

 

--Karen Hughes (George Bush’s former idiot of a press secretary)

 

Bin Laden's little helper | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

[C1ay]

…our constitution cites "one nation under God."

 

--Karen Hughes (George Bush’s former idiot of a press secretary)

 

Bin Laden's little helper | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

 

What a dumbass. The word "God" appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.

[TheBigDog]

What a dumbass. The word "God" appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.

 

At least she knew she was not third in line for the Presidency...