Separation of church and state

[utunumsint]

…Seems fairly arbitrary. Why not a separation of Holywood and state? Or science and state?

I know that there are historical reasons for this.For example, the religious wars in Europe and Americans trying to set aside their religious differences for the sake of building up a better world. Seems like in the states it is the IRS that polices this boundary.Seems like Obama and Biden want to shrink the domain of church into an ever smaller territory.

Any thoughts on what the proper boundary, if any, should be?

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Is the very effort to separate church and state a source of secularism and a source of moral relativism? Seems like secularists want to characterise the question of whether a child in eutero is a human being or not to the realm of metaphisics, and therefor a religious problem. Or at least this is a wegde issue for them to push an agenda of population control.

Same thing with pornography. If the secularists want to give people freedom to produce pornography, they need to make metaphysica or phylosophica arguments about why this is OK. But somehow, if those arguing against them are religious, their arguments are disqualified.

So the process is: characterise a point of view as religious, therefor personal, therefor not admissible for discussion by the state who must be secular when making laws and passing bills.

God bless,
Ut

 

[GaryTaylor]

Seperation of Church and State is a sentence included in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptist Congregation in Danbury CT. Its not even mentioned in the Constitution, nor was it Thomas Jeffersons intent to give the State isolated control over the Church without conscious binding. In fact it was the opposite intent of Jefferson that State not interfer with the Church.

Today we have a “contradiction”.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

…Seems fairly arbitrary. Why not a separation of Holywood and state? Or science and state?

Curious to what the means. Churches and government are both organizations that to some degree try to regulate the behaviour of people and issue laws/rules/regulations and punishments. Assuming that by “Hollywood” you mean the activities of making movies and other videos (as opposed to a district of Los Angelos, California) I am not sure where the potential conflict is. Science in general is the organization, discovery, and testing if various types of knowledge but not a governing entity. Not sure where the conflict would be there either.

I know that there are historical reasons for this.

Yes, religiously motivated laws were somebtimesvused to target people of other religions. Not very charitable. There are modern reasons to. Even before the declaration of its independence the USA has had people of Christian and non-Christian religions and today we have more variations of religion. If you were to try to unite church and state which church would it be (this being a catholic forum I imagine a catholic bias on this question)? Do we really want a religious power struggle in the government (though some might argue there already are some).

Any thoughts on what the proper boundary, if any, should be?

That’s something that we (as a nation) are trying to figure out. That is part of yhe reason that these laws change.

Pardon my mistakes. Sent from my mobile device.

 

[yellow8yellowM]

…If you were to try to unite church and state which church would it be (this being a catholic forum I imagine a catholic bias on this question)? Do we really want a religious power struggle in the government (though some might argue there already are some)

Nobody is advocating uniting church and state. That was the whole point of the first amendment. I don’t think there has ever, in the history of our country, been a serious push to establish a state religion.

 

[bitznbitez]

…Seems fairly arbitrary. Why not a separation of Holywood and state? Or science and state?

Because only religion is the enemy of the secularists. To understand Jefferson and his views relative to religion one should read Ye Will Say I Am No Christian. Letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. amazon.com/Will-Say-Christian-Jefferson-Correspondence/dp/1591023564 ]

After working through that one realizes that where we are now was the goal of some leaders all along.

 

[Bl_Pope_Pius_IX]

We must recall the radical thoughts of the secularists in Europe, as well. From France to Italy to America, the separation of Church and State has haunted the Church and only offered us a roadblock. In the Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX promulgated that “The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church.” is an error. Holy Mother Church should be totally opposed to this separation, no good can come from it.

 

[yellow8yellowM]

Any thoughts on what the proper boundary, if any, should be?

God bless,
Ut

Proper boundary:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
-Constitution of the United States of America

There are two parts to this amendment. The first is that Congress cannot establish a state religion. The second is that Congress cannot make a law restricting the free to practice our own respective religions.

The problem we have today is that most people are either not educated or were intentionally mis-educated regarding the first amendment (among many other things). The main misunderstands are these:

1. Misunderstanding: Congressmen should not use their own personal religious views when making laws. If you think about this even just a little bit, you will see that it is impossible to separate morals from policy. Even if it were possible, why would you even want to separate them? Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say a Congressman is an atheist and believes that life begins at conception. He writes a bill that bans abortions, and nobody questions his religious motives. Ten years later this man converts and is Catholic. He writes another bill trying to ban abortions. Now, people say he is imposing his religious views on everybody else. Why is it that atheists are free to write bills about moral issues but religious people are not?
2. Misunderstanding: Tax money should not fund religious activities. This was not the intent of the 1st amendment. If my local city wants to put a Christmas tree out in the town square, they have to use tax money to do so. They are not establishing a state (or city) religion, and they are not keeping anybody from exercising their own religion. So what is the problem? If have a government policy that restricts the use of Christmas trees, you are being exclusionary as well. In effect, you are saying that the atheists are getting their tree displayed in public. No matter what you do, you will be exclusionary to some degree. Again, read the text of the 1st amendment.

 

[kingpomba]

What if that church wasn’t yours?

Let’s dabble in a little alternative history and say you grew up and lived under an Islamic government heavily intertwined with the church, would you still be against separation?

 

[utunumsint]

Seperation of Church and State is a sentence included in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptist Congregation in Danbury CT. Its not even mentioned in the Constitution, nor was it Thomas Jeffersons intent to give the State isolated control over the Church without conscious binding. In fact it was the opposite intent of Jefferson that State not interfer with the Church.

Today we have a “contradiction”.

My knowledge of American history is limited. I got Canadian approved curriculums that attempted to forge a multicultural uber culture by watering down any sense of historical or religious identity anyone might have. I now come to believe that this was intentionally done by the polititians and think tanks of my day and for some reason, no one questioned it. I sometimes wonder what things would have been like had we not had publically funded schools.

I know that there is an even longer back history in this question and maybe a back and forth between French revolutionary philosophy and American philosophy, but it is a gap in my edutation. I focused primarily on the classics and more broad stroke philosophies rather than political theory. I should have taken a few more foundational courses to cover some of these things in university.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

We must recall the radical thoughts of the secularists in Europe, as well. From France to Italy to America, the separation of Church and State has haunted the Church and only offered us a roadblock. In the Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX promulgated that “The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church.” is an error. Holy Mother Church should be totally opposed to this separation, no good can come from it.

I don’t want to derail this discussion on this topic, but I understood that the Syllabus is not official church teaching. Is there any more official sources that say this? For example the Catechism or Papal Encyclicals?

God Bless,
Ut

 

[Victorygirl]

To Gary Taylor - or in fact, anyone who wants to reply - Does it make any different that Jefferson and most of the Founding Fathers were Deists? Meaning, they didn’t believe in the concept of God intervening or causing miracles and so forth, rather they believed in Naturalism, that God makes the world go around and created the things in it and that is about as far as it would go, right? (Doubt my definition would pass in grad school, but I don’t want to write a thesis here. Apologies!!!)

Also thinking, we are all not of the same religion, so you would have to ask yourself, WHICH church and state? All religions? Or only Christianity?

Thanks! VG

 

[utunumsint]

What if that church wasn’t yours?

Let’s dabble in a little alternative history and say you grew up and lived under an Islamic government heavily intertwined with the church, would you still be against separation?

This is an interesting point… I wonder if this would ever be a question in the Islamic context, or is the only reason we are having this discussion is because we have a Judeo Christian background?

In Greece, for example, in Athens, they had a form of democracy that included a very syncretistic religious system. There was no separation of church and state. Just our religions and foreign religions. The first were treated with trust, and the later with distrust. Because the later were a minority, they did not have much to say in Athenian politics. Frankly, no one expected to be included in the dominant culture’s democratic politics… on religious matters that is.

Romans saw religions as a function, almost an office of the state, and tolerated different religions so long as you paid homage to the state religion. Christians, because their religious beliefs precluded the idea of other Gods could not integrate with the Roman pantheon this way, and became labeled as Atheists and enemies of the state.

Kubilah Khan tried to asymilate himself to all the religions he conquered, including Islam, Nestorian Christianity, and the various eastern religions he encountered. He was really good at putting on different hats for diferent ocassions. He was sincerily terrified of offending some powerful deity, and kept an army of diviners and soothsayers to make sure he didn’t anger any one of them before starting any undertaking. He was surprisingly tolerant though.

Our current secular society is very different from all of these examples though. Never before in history has a political system simply acted as though your religious background had nothing to say in the political arena.

God bless,
Ut

 

[kingpomba]

This is an interesting point… I wonder if this would ever be a question in the Islamic context, or is the only reason we are having this discussion is because we have a Judeo Christian background?

I am interested in philosophy of religion (and a former catholic too) which is why i am here and i focus on Shi’a Islam. There is actually a legitimate debate going on in the roots of the community about this very issue.

Many believe Islamic law will be imperfectly and invalidly applied in the absence of a infallible Imam. The last Imam disappeared (but not died, he is waiting for the right time to reappear) in the 7th century. We can’t replace him since he isn’t dead but he isn’t present to rule on law either [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Imams]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Imams]).

I think it’s a very interesting point though. It sheds some light on the separation of church and state and why we might need it. I’m sure you can fathom many reasons why you would advocate separation of church and state if you were a catholic in a Muslim country (even though they are religiously obligated to protect you as a Christian).

I think the degree of separation is more important than the question of separation itself. I’m sure few of us want to see such a strong and overt intertwining of Church and State like in certain Islamic jurisdictions. Some of the bad things done on the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire and nominally, the church, remind us the church being the state might not be the best thing either.

One of the key things is probably the protection of people who don’t belong to the church. Zoroastrians are horrible discriminated against in Iran and unlike Christians and Jews, there is no religious obligation towards them. I would hate to see what would of happened to the Jewish people in Europe if Martin Luther’s Church was the state (of course we know Luther is infamous for his book “on the Jews and their lies” and other antisemitic doctrines).

As an atheist, i wouldn’t like living under a state where laws are derived a strictly biblical basis. I’m sure the reasons for that are obvious. Just like you as a Christian might not like the prohibition on preaching in Saudi Arabia, which isn’t really based on any separate logical reasoning (maybe a Machiavellian one) but on the sole fact their book told them too. If you feel an aversion toward that, you might understand why others would not want to live under a state like that.

Bottom line, i guess my question would be, which elements of separation are you unhappy with and what would you replace them with?

 

[ChurchSoldier]

To Gary Taylor - or in fact, anyone who wants to reply - Does it make any different that Jefferson and most of the Founding Fathers were Deists? Meaning, they didn’t believe in the concept of God intervening or causing miracles and so forth, rather they believed in Naturalism, that God makes the world go around and created the things in it and that is about as far as it would go, right? (Doubt my definition would pass in grad school, but I don’t want to write a thesis here. Apologies!!!)

Also thinking, we are all not of the same religion, so you would have to ask yourself, WHICH church and state? All religions? Or only Christianity?

Thanks! VG

Thanks for the offer. Actually most of the founders were Christians. Out of the 50 odd founding members, virtually all attended a Christian church. 27 of them had degrees from what are now called Bible colleges or seminaries. None even considered a religion other than Christianity to be the “faith of the nation”.

The establishment clause traces it roots to the English reformation where for the first few decades each time the monarch changed, the religion would change from Anglicanism to Catholicism and back. The clerics and people would often lose life, liberty or property if they did not vow allegiance to the state religion. The founders word “church” is what we now call a denomination. Virginia even had an official religion (Anglicanism) for which every person was taxed to support. What the founders did not want was a persecution about religion every time the President changed.

So while the modern myth that our founders were deists has been perpetuated so long people believe it, there was nothing farther from the truth. The Capital Building in Washington, once completed, had a church in the main rotunda for the first seven years. Not the sort of thing a government which wanted complete separation from a church would have done!

PAX

 

[utunumsint]

I am interested in philosophy of religion (and a former catholic too) which is why i am here and i focus on Shi’a Islam. There is actually a legitimate debate going on in the roots of the community about this very issue.

Many believe Islamic law will be imperfectly and invalidly applied in the absence of a infallible Imam. The last Imam disappeared (but not died, he is waiting for the right time to reappear) in the 7th century. We can’t replace him since he isn’t dead but he isn’t present to rule on law either [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Imams]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Imams]).

I think it’s a very interesting point though. It sheds some light on the separation of church and state and why we might need it. I’m sure you can fathom many reasons why you would advocate separation of church and state if you were a catholic in a Muslim country (even though they are religiously obligated to protect you as a Christian).

I think the degree of separation is more important than the question of separation itself. I’m sure few of us want to see such a strong and overt intertwining of Church and State like in certain Islamic jurisdictions. Some of the bad things done on the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire and nominally, the church, remind us the church being the state might not be the best thing either.

One of the key things is probably the protection of people who don’t belong to the church. Zoroastrians are horrible discriminated against in Iran and unlike Christians and Jews, there is no religious obligation towards them.

As an atheist, i wouldn’t like living under a state where laws are derived a strictly biblical basis. I’m sure the reasons for that are obvious. Just like you as a Christian might not like the prohibition on preaching in Saudi Arabia, which isn’t really based on any separate logical reasoning (maybe a Machiavellian one) but on the sole fact their book told them too. If you feel an aversion toward that, you might understand why others would not want to live under a state like that.

I studied the classics and comparative religion in university. I don’t think you can merely say to separate church from state solves any problems. You really have to look at each religion in a case by case manner and follow your conscience. I mean, Stalinist Russia actively tried to destroy all religion. Marx saw religion as the opiate of the masses and saw no place for it in his utopia. To tell you the truth, I would much rather be a Catholic in Iran than a Catholic in Soviet Russia.

God bless,
Ut

 

[kingpomba]

Marx saw religion as the opiate of the masses and saw no place for it in his utopia. To tell you the truth, I would much rather be a Catholic in Iran than a Catholic in Soviet Russia.

Soviet Russia (China, et al) was more than just simple separation of church and state though. We have a fairly nominal separation in places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand and it doesn’t cause many problems. The soviets went down a much darker path, they weren’t just secular (that is, having nothing to do with religion OR lack of religion as well, the question of religion doesn’t pop up) they were avowedly an Atheistic state (as opposed to secular) and they were anti-religion and anti-clerical.

I’m an atheist (granted not one of those “new atheist” richard dawkins types) but i certainly wouldn’t support this kind of thing. If it were happening i’d be fighting on the side of the religious.

As i was saying earlier, i think its the degree of separation thats the important thing.

 

[Victorygirl]

Thanks for the offer. Actually most of the founders were Christians. Out of the 50 odd founding members, virtually all attended a Christian church. 27 of them had degrees from what are now called Bible colleges or seminaries. None even considered a religion other than Christianity to be the “faith of the nation”.

The establishment clause traces it roots to the English reformation where for the first few decades each time the monarch changed, the religion would change from Anglicanism to Catholicism and back. The clerics and people would often lose life, liberty or property if they did not vow allegiance to the state religion. The founders word “church” is what we now call a denomination. Virginia even had an official religion (Anglicanism) for which every person was taxed to support. What the founders did not want was a persecution about religion every time the President changed.

So while the modern myth that our founders were deists has been perpetuated so long people believe it, there was nothing farther from the truth. The Capital Building in Washington, once completed, had a church in the main rotunda for the first seven years. Not the sort of thing a government which wanted complete separation from a church would have done!

PAX

Excuse me. I meant the most important and influential founding fathers such as:

John Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
John Jay (Only he I think was an Orthodox Christian)
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
George Washington

“It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov’t from interference in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.”
James Madison, “James Madison on Religious Liberty”, edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238 .

I could go on, but I think my point is clear. I am a devout Christian, hoping to be a Catholic soon, but I do not wish to fool myself. That is where I am coming from. If it comes to the point that there is too much sway in a way I find unconscionable, Then I guess I have to part ways. I hope not tho… Thanks for your understanding and I hope not to be taking away from the OP…

 

[sedonaman]

…Seems fairly arbitrary. Why not a separation of Holywood and state? Or science and state?
…

Or atheism and state?

 

[utunumsint]

Or atheism and state?

Touche