Culture and Religion

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The First Liberty

The BreakPoint attempts an answer to this question: Do Christians believe in the separation of church and state?

The answer is: 'yes, but...' because the conclusion drawn in the article is: the First Amendment was intended to protect the church from government interference; it in no way intended that religious influence should be kept out of public life.

There are a number of our Founding Fathers that did not seek the religious influence in the government affairs, including Franklin, Jefferson and Paine. The First Amendment to the Constitution begins with: Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Only later did Jefferson pen the words: separation of church and state.

Our Founding Fathers were not from the Middle East or Asia. However, many of them recognized how important it would be for the government not to be influenced by religion. That many of our Founding Fathers were brought up in various Christian faiths does not make this a Christian nation.

As described in other pages in this site, a religion tends to be divisive, creating a group of believers or followers that are distinct from those that do not. As the religion's leaders become more evangelical, this divisiveness intensifies, bringing with it a desire to convince (force?) others to believe the same. If the woes of society can be blamed on the non-believers then a religious crusade can begin, that can root out the cause of the problems that are so caused. An attitude of 'us vs them' becomes a rallying cry. It is for all of these reasons that it is important that government be separated from religion because their combination is detrimental to society and to those that oppose the force.

With the Bush 43 administration (more often than those that preceded), legislation is being considered that would bring religious values into law - the establishment of a national religion. By bringing the religious influence into the laws, the power of the government is increased, since it can claim that its laws are somehow righteous, even as it alienates those of different religious views. Religion in politics tends to enable those of the larger religions (in number of followers) to have more power and influence than those of the smaller religions.

The Founding Fathers sought to create a limited government but as the original republic has degenerated into a democracy characterized as a 'popular tyranny', with the elected caretakers spending tax dollars irresponsibly as the foreign adventures dominate the political arena, the problems foreseen by our ancestors are arising, where the majority will suppress the minority.

The original link in case the article ever returns to Breakpoint:

(http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=PFM_Site &TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=11374)

created - Mar 2005
last change - 03/06/2005
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