Separation of Church and State

I am wondering if any of you have been gnashing your teeth, and shout at the TV whenever you watch the news. There are a lot of negative issues. For instance, the United States now educater fewer scientists each year, we import more high-tech products, many Americans think that the answer for teen pregnancy is not education on birth control and safe sex, but abstinance. Don’t get me wrong I, in theory, believe that abstinance should be taught but there is a gap between theory and reality. Teens with raging hormones don’t always understand what parents and schools are trying to tell them.

My biggest frustration, however, is the people who are talking and insisting on the idea that this country was formed as a Christian Country. So, I am going to explain what is really has happened.

” Those who won our independence believed…that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,,,that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope, and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government…Fear cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”  ——by Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Thomas Jefferson on separation of church and state

God is claimed by both sides in a war, and the Bible is used to defend the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, lynching, apartheid, racism, povery, violence against women, homophobia and a score of other human tragedies. The three largest Christian-right organizations call for “Crusaders” to pray that certain U.S. Supreme Court justices whose voting records they dislike will die. Televangelist Pat Robertson blames talk show host, Ellen Deganeres for the disaster of  Hurricane Katrina. He also intimidated that God had sent the Hurricane to punish people. Robertson also declares that the attack on America on 9-11, was also God punishing America.

Did you know?

The Air Force Academy, has developed a “strident evangelicalism”. There have been fifty-five complaints of religious discrimination filed in the past few years. The Academy has also become a test tube of sexual harrassment. Female cadets filed charges that were ignored or overlooked. Faith-based prisons are apparently making money by reaping in the profits of spreading the Gospel to convicts. As taxpayers, we pay for proselytizing prisons without ever giving permission or voting for our money to be used in this manner. Inmates receive special priveleges if they follow all-day, all-week, Christian agendas. Prision ministries have as much as $46 million budgets.

Kennedy quote re: Church and State

The Constitution of the United States of America does not contain even one reference to a diety — on purpose. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the Founding Fathers of our country and he said, the Founding Fathers were a hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, and Freemansons. Above all they were radicals.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god.”  —Thomas Jefferson

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind.”  –James Madison

“I doubt of Revelation itself.”  –Benjamin Franklin

” My own mind is my church” –Thomas Paine

George W. Bush added, “so help me God.” to his presidential oath of office.

Pat Robertson claims that “In God We Trust” was on our currency and “Under God” was the U.S. motto from 1776.  These were not added until 1950.

John Adams  declared, ” The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, ” No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living genetation.”

We now take it for granted that churches, temples, mosques, and other religious institutions are tax exempt-but it was not always that way, nor was it the intent of the Founders. This policy was the fruit of a religious campaign.

So was “In God We Trust” getting stamped onto our coinage and the insertion of ” Under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. The religious movement that we are living in is different. This time is the blatant political mobilization of extreme right religious forces, which seek to change the Constitutional mandate to keep Church and State separated.  This mandate is why the Founding Fathers called their new country a Republic, not a Theocracy.

Ronald Reagan’s quote

I would like to be clear about one thing in this blog. I believe the Fathers built a wall between Church and State. I also believe in the Divinity of the Universe. I believe it dwells within each of us and all of life around us. The One wants us to love, support, accept, care for each other and all living things including our planet. He/she/It does not a government run. So think about what is really happening right now in our country.

Some excerpts taken from Fighting Words, by Robin Morgan