Is the separation of church and state a lie?

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ceetee

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According to Katherine Harris it is. (If you don't know who Harris is, she was Florida's Secretary of State during the 2000 election. Appointed by Jeb, she was single-handedly responsible for delaying the recount for so long the Supremes decided any attempt to actually count our votes would be impossible in the time remaining...)

Here is one version of the story

ORLANDO, Aug. 25 -- Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics.

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris told interviewers from the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. She cited abortion and same-sex marriage as examples of that sin.


Harris told the journalists "we have to have the faithful in government" because that is God's will. Separating religion and politics is "so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers," she said.

Hmmm. I thought the voters chose our rulers. Maybe I can just stop going to the polls. Opinions?
 
just to comment on the phony separation concept...
there is no separation of church and state specifically in our constitution...
it was a statement that Thomas Jefferson used in a letter to baptists in the early 19th century...
20th century SCOTUS judges picked up on this letter,
and invented the separation concept,...
as they tend to invent and nullify many things...
 
Phrases used in the Declaration of Independence that might help understand why God never signed the document.

"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"

"endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"

"appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions"

"with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence"
 
No such thing. It's BS made up by the anti-american communist lawyers union to destroy this country.

The 1st Amendment says congress shall pass no law establishing a national religion or preventing the free exercise of religion.

As long as there is no rule that say you must be Amish, Buddhist, Islamic then the 1st Amendment has been upheld.

The ACLU frequently overlooks the 2nd portion and on some communist leftwing radio shows whenever they have a rep from the ACLU on they omit that portion when they recite the bill of rights. They also skip over the 2nd amendment.
 
ORLANDO, Aug. 25 -- Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics.

Erm . . .what? :confused: I was under the impression that not being religious is career suicide for politicians in the U.S. Although I expect that you would have to be a religious Christian (fundamentalist), to please this woman. :rolleyes:
 
I believe the US government and our laws demonstrate the absolute linkage between God, the government, the law, and the people. Also believe that it was the intent of our founding fathers that there be no state religion which gave birth to the concept of separation of church and state. It has worked pretty well overall.

Our politicians have tried generally to keep their private lives (including religion) separate from their legislative lives. Ted Kennedy might be a good example. But, much of our law is based on religious principle.

As far as Katherine Harris goes and her reported comments, I suspect that the article like your introduction are designed to make a political point.

Ceetee opening comment: "According to Katherine Harris it is. (If you don't know who Harris is, she was Florida's Secretary of State during the 2000 election. Appointed by Jeb, she was single-handedly responsible for delaying the recount for so long the Supremes decided any attempt to actually count our votes would be impossible in the time remaining...)". It is pretty obvious where your politics lie and I totally disagree with your implied statement above. She did her job. Al Gore did not win no matter how you want to paint it.

One might consider the radical muslim threat to our country and the western world (primarily a secular one); some unification might be a good thing. If that unification lies in christian principle, then so be it. Christian principles are not much different from the muslim prinicple. It is the radical facist element that needs to be eliminated. Nazi Germany is a great example of an idea fostered by a few spreading to the general population becoming a worldwide threat. Eliminating that threat cost millions of lives.
 
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No such thing. It's BS made up by the anti-american communist lawyers union to destroy this country.

The 1st Amendment says congress shall pass no law establishing a national religion or preventing the free exercise of religion.

Geezus, is this 1950? What kind of a timewarp are you living in? First of all, that's not what it says, dammit. If you're going to pontificate, at least know what you're talking about. The text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's a well established precedent that the SCOTUS has read that such that "respecting" would include the establishment or reference to a particular religious belief as some necessary element of our govt. Period.
 
But, much of our law is based on religious principle

Isn't it possible that some religious priciples are just plain common sense and that's what the law is really based on? If we're talking Judeo Christian principles, are we to believe that prior to the 10 Commandments everyone thought killing someone else was a great idea?

Laws should be written based on doing the right thing because it's accepted as the right thing to do. IMO...not because the Magical Sky Wizard will strike you down with lightning. The two will converge more often than not and that's OK.
 
To say that religious thought and practice didn't influence our founders view of the world, government and its relationship to the citizenry is revisionist history at its worst.

The protection is to keep government out of religion not to keep religious people and their ideas out of govrnment.

There is no fear of a Theocracy if everyone follows the constitution.

On the other hand, how can you expect those charged with protecting our rights to do so if they don't even believe in natures God from whom those rights derive?
 
And yet, if you read even a little about Mr. Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (excerpt below), the precursor to the U.S. law, you'll find that the intent was to prevent the government from picking one church to collect the taxes and impose fines and penalties based on religious practices. For instance, read a history of the Quakers in Virginia - I never knew they were fined, hung and persecuted. That's why it's so difficult to do genealogical research - they wouldn't register their marriages with the government's church.

"Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

_________________________

www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/princip.html

1624--Act of the Assembly. Anyone missing one Sunday service was fined one pound of tobacco; one month, fifty pounds. No one was allowed to sell crops until the minister had received his portion, and it had to come from the "first and best tobacco and corn."

1628--Proclamation of the Governor. Colonists were forbidden "to marry without lycence or asking in church."

1632--Act of the Assembly. All ministers were required to maintain complete uniformity to the teachings and constitution of the Church of England, and ministers were to receive from each family the twentieth calf, kid, and pig.

1642--Act of the Assembly. "All nonconformists upon notice of them shall be compelled to depart the collony with all conveniencie." "No ministers shall be admitted to officiate in this country, but such as shall produce to the governor a testimonial that he hath received his ordination from some bishop in England, and shall then subscribe, to be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the church of England, and the laws there established." The tithe tax, for ministers salaries, of ten pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn was applied to "all youths of sixteen years of age as upwards, as also for all negro women at the age of sixteen years."

1660--Act of the Assembly. The captain of any ship bringing Quakers into the colony was fined 100 pounds, and all Quakers who did enter were to be expelled.

1661--Act of the Assembly. All parishes were required to furnish glebes, houses, and stock for ministers.

1662--Act of the Assembly. Ministers were required to prove that they were ordained by an English bishop, and all others were prohibited from teaching or preaching, publicly or privately.

Responsibility for administering church matters was given to vestrymen elected by the people of the parish. The vestries determined the amount of taxes (and tax rates) necessary for the minister's salary, other church expenses, and relief of the poor. Obviously, religion in colonial Virginia was established by law; and, because taxation was also a significant matter of law, vestrymen were usually wealthy politicians and often members of the House of Burgesses.
 
Pick a subject, any subject: This country, throughout its history--and going back to before it was the U.S. of A.--has swung back and forth like a pendulum. We spend a lot more time out at the end of the swings than we do in the middle.

The middle, generally, is where it's peaceful.

I don't care if it's religion (Puritanism vs. today's Hollywood), labor/management or whatever. We're always going through spells of extremes.

Right now, the ACLU is on an extreme anti-Christian kick. Well, you poke a hornet's nest, and there's a bunch of buzzing. Add in the media and its love of controversy, and you have a bunch of once-quiet Christians getting upset. IOW, it would be surprising if there were NO comments like those of Harris, regardless of accuracy...

Art
 
Yeah, I was actually going to add that as part of my original post that the christian principles are really just common sense slanted toward what we would call the "good side". That is one of the arguments about there not being a God; God was "created" to provide a unifying basis for defining good and evil so that social order is maintained. I'm not in that camp.

What is good or accepted changes over time. There needs to be some over- riding principle or document; in this case, it's our Constitution. It is really quite a document. I doubt that a country and our Constitution could be created today without the intervention of a stronger force. Some would say that force is the force of good, others would say it is God, still others would say that it is only through the efforts of the US these days that a country could be re-born with a true secular democratic form of government without the total collapse of the world economy.

Private ownership of guns and freedom have been lumped into what is "good" in this country. Without the private ownership of firearms, our country probably would not have been formed. Certainly, an armed civilian population is a deterent to a dictatorial form of government or any govenment that is viewed as totalitarian or abusive of its power and citizens. Now we have the UN wanting to disarm the world.
 
Setting aside the recount remark - something the moonbats still can't get over - Katherine Harris makes a valid comment.

The point of Christianity is not that you better do good or the "Magical Sky Wizard will strike you down". That's not just ill-informed it is insulting.
The point of Christianity is that although mankind aspires to do good the natural tendency is towards evil.

The point of Christian teaching is to understand that precept and to provide a framework to avoid the sin that mankind is heir to.

This is what the framers, as Christians (mostly) understood: the laws of man are written by man and are subject to sin; the laws of God are free of that sin.

They also realized that forcing people to worship at a certain altar led to the very sin they were trying to avoid.

This has nothing to do with crosses on hills outside San Diego etc.
The ACLU is simply a godless communist organization devoted to the downfall of the United States.

G
 
just to comment on the phony separation concept...
there is no separation of church and state specifically in our constitution...
it was a statement that Thomas Jefferson used in a letter to baptists in the early 19th century...
20th century SCOTUS judges picked up on this letter,
and invented the separation concept,...
as they tend to invent and nullify many things...
While you are correct there is no explicit statement of separation of Church and State in the Constitution, it is clearly implied, and you have mischaracterized how the Court used Jefferson's statement. Anyone who has actually objectively read Jefferson's statement, and how the Court used it understands that.

For anyone who actually cares what Jefferson actually said and how the Court applied his statement read this: (the whole link, not just the quote below):
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/01.html#1
In 1802, President Jefferson wrote a letter to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, in which he declared that it was the purpose of the First Amendment to build ''a wall of separation between Church and State.'' 15 In Reynolds v. United States, 16 Chief Justice Waite for the Court characterized the phrase as ''almost an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment.''
Now, rev214 if you are claiming Jefferson's statement doesn't show the clear intent of "the framers," or "founding fathers," and cannot be used to support the notion that the 1st Amendment was intended to create a "wall of separation between Church and State," then you will need to point that out every time someone claims a statement from the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, or any other writings by one of the "founding fathers," when trying to support a particular interpretation of the Constitution.
 
On the other hand, how can you expect those charged with protecting our rights to do so if they don't even believe in natures God from whom those rights derive?

Because you can still believe in the inalienable rights of man without resorting to believing in The Big Sky Daddy. Believing in God is not a prerequisite for valuing human rights.

The ACLU is simply a godless communist organization devoted to the downfall of the United States.
Yeah, protecting civil liberties is the first step to tearing the place down. :rolleyes: I'm no ACLU member, I don't like the way they ignore the 2A either, but you have to admit that hyperbolic nonsense like that just makes it easier for the anti-gunners to paint us RKBA types as moonbats as well.
 
Jefferson's letter did not imply separation of church and state as most people understand it. As for court decisions, look at basically any case decided before the 1940's. They all ruled against what we would call separation of church and state. Sure, there was a huge paradigm change in the SC in the 1930-1940s, but it had to do with personal and philosophical opinions of the justices, not legitimate Constitutional reasoning.

In any case, those of you who quoted the court's opinion as solid proof for separation of church and state, seeing the decisions they have handed down recently, are you sure that you want them to be the final arbiter of all Constitutional matters? It seems to me that they just might have made a few mistakes in the last few years.
 
No "separation" of Church and State in USA. Sorry. Try North Korea. The events of the 2000 election rankle the Dems; they're supposed to get all the close ones with their trademark election fraud. 2000 was a close one they didn't get. Reason? Well, after Florida's electoral votes were awarded to W, the Supreme Court of the State of Florida ruled against Florida law to keep the recounts going, but the people doing the recounting were being videotaped, so they couldn't get away with very much. They wanted Gore to win, but they weren't willing to risk going to jail for him. Then, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the decision of the Supreme Court of Florida and ended the series of recounts. That's about it.
 
The ACLU is simply a godless communist organization devoted to the downfall of the United States.
Yeah, protecting civil liberties is the first step to tearing the place down. I'm no ACLU member, I don't like the way they ignore the 2A either, but you have to admit that hyperbolic nonsense like that just makes it easier for the anti-gunners to paint us RKBA types as moonbats as well.
Reading some history might change your opinion about "hyperbolic nonsense."
 
The main part of the declaration of independence is basically a set of complaints against the king of england.

Lincoln was the guy who started using the declaration as a constitutional justification for ending slavery and the like.

Nobody is asserting that religious people shouldn't be in government, but I think everybody agrees that the constitution is the basis of government, not the bible. I see some politicians quoting the bible when legislating, and that makes me cringe.

Reading some history might change your opinion about "hyperbolic nonsense."

Just because the founder/history of the ACLU is one way, doesn't mean the actions of the ACLU presently are the same. If you can list some examples of the ACLU acting against the bill of rights, please link it.

I can understand disliking/hating the ACLU for not standing up for the 2nd amendment, but dude, saying their goal is to cause the downfall of the USA is the saddest, craziest **** I've heard in a while.
 
Personally, I would say the wall is to protect other churches from churches that want to adversely affect them through the state.
 
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