June 3, 2003
Why there is Seperation of Church & State
Since we will keep hearing from religious nuts who are going to
be trying even harder now to get their "Christianity" further into
our Government, I'd like to offer some words on the matter:
While the founders of our government were very religious men,
there is an absence of religious doctrine in the Constitution
and in the Bill of Rights. How else ensure that all religions
get fair and equal attention by the law? Only by the lack of any
one particular religion in the law can we have the assurance
that all religions are equal before the law. That this is the
case in our Constitution and in our Bill of Rights can not be
denied.
Yes, the founding fathers were religious. Yes, much of society
is religious. The lack of religious doctrine in our country's
Constitution does not mean that religion is not to be part of
our society, only our government. It really is important to
have a society that loves its neighbors, that is charitable,
that is peaceful and forgiving. Religion provides for that and
more.
However, in a greatly diverse country such as ours, we need
equality. And the cornerstone of our Constitution is equality.
And the only way to ensure that all religons are equal before the
law is to not have religion as part of that law.
We want, for example, to make sure that Christians are not treated
less than or otherwise than the rest of society. This is extremely
important. But we also want the same for Catholics, Protestants,
Baptists, Buddhists, Mormons, Muslums, Hindus, Jews, Shintos,
Sikhs, and even atheists.
Also, we want to make sure that _no religion_ is treated better than,
or allotted more privilege than, _any other religion_.
Ensuring equality is very simple; *the seperation of church and state*.
The architects of our republic knew this.
We only need to recall Thomas Jefferson's often-quoted words to
understand this:
quote:: Thomas Jefferson
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely
between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his
faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government
reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign
reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that
their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus
building a wall of separation between church and state.
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If anyone would like to know more (certainly people are not going
to just take my word for this and are going to research historical
facts), I would suggest starting at FindLaw's website:
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/ U.S. Constitution Case Code
Of particular interest would be the annotations to the First
Amendment.
note::
The nuts will of course sneer about "make no law" in TJs quote, but
in all cases of Church/State mergence, laws will have to be created even
if they are as unassuming as "we shall allow [put your doctrine here]
on State walls." You can call this point a nit, but Law *is* about picking nits,
isn't it?
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