<p>Agreed, source:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html[/url]”>http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html</a></p>
<p>FS,</p>
<p>The deity is in the details. (I’m not biting on the fed v. state issue, by the way; I’m assuming we all know about the 14th amendment.) There’s more than one way to skin a cat, or establish a church. If California were to start paying the salaries of Wiccan missionaries, and fund the expense with a 90% tax on donations to Baptist churchs, I imagine the Pacific Legal Foundation would be as offended as the ACLU.</p>
<p>It’s uncharitable of you to assume that all of us who support the ACLU’s position on the establishment clause are “bigoted and intolerant” when it comes to religion. Although I’ve paid dues to the ACLU for the past several years, I’ve actually donated a greater sum in that same period in support of Baptist missionaries.</p>
<p>I share the ACLU’s view that the establishment clause and the free exercise clause are both necessary elements of religious freedom. Both are worthy of zealous protection.</p>
<p>dadguy, </p>
<p>However, Papa Adams (John, 2nd pres.) held rather strong views on the subject; perhaps less straddling of the fence was going on than would be preferred in these quarters. As he succinctly said,</p>
<p>“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”</p>
<p>Hayden,
you are right, it was Jefferson who said it in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to answer a letter from them written in October 1801
Jefferson being much enamored of the French revolution with its radicalism and secular zealotry expressed most clearly in the mechanism of the guillotine.</p>
<p>and your point is what? That we should now ignore Jefferson’s interpretations of the Constitution? So which Founders pass your litmus tests?</p>
<p>Greybeard,</p>
<p>I was not aware that the issue of separation, as currently expressed, was fought over putting missionaries on the dole. I believe it would be more relevant to ask whether or not the establishment clause was intended to prevent religious themes in education (biblical, quranic or Sri Guru Granth Sahib); the use of public facilities for faith groups; the public display of religious figures and texts, etc.</p>
<p>I would certainly agree that the establishment clause would have prohibited the funding of slacker-ministers, priests and rabbis and wiccans.</p>
<p>No, that we should not ignore <em>all</em> for one, as it suits us.</p>
<p>Can you agree that many of the founders were deeply religious men who for some reason or another decided, as a whole, not to impose their beliefs on everybody else?</p>
<p>Absolutely!</p>
<p>They did not, however, relegate religion to the civic ghetto or place a scarlet <em>S</em> on the <em>faithful</em> when frequenting the public square…schoolhouse or Whitehouse (whatever their faith). </p>
<p>They simply did not impose religion as such on the government of the people. The were, OTOH, often very religious in their own practice of life and law as a personal disposition and in public proclamation–that is to say, they would have been shouted down by the dogmatic-secularists (not to be confused with secularists) of our time as religious______ (insert derogatory term–bigot, fundamentalist, ayatollah, bible-thumper you know the routine, Im sure; if not, look back through this thread for a heads-up).</p>
<p>No one is suggesting relegating religious people to ghetto’s, any more than anyone ever suggested ignoring all the founders but one. Discussions with people are perhaps easier when you don’t really deal with their actual points, but instead with straw men. But such discussions are not really very constructive.</p>
<p>FS,</p>
<p>You write, “I was not aware that the issue of separation, as currently expressed, was fought over putting missionaries on the dole.”</p>
<p>Let me assure you, then, that much of the current debate on the establishment clause is being fought precisely over the issue of whether Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” are in fact an attempt to put missionaries on the dole.</p>
<p>So What ?</p>
<p>FS, I would agree with the quote you gave from John Adams but would phrase it differently.
I would say that our constitution with its freedoms was made for a “guilt based culture” and not a “shame based culture”. A shame based culture is one in which people are concerned most with what other people say about them. An example would be the Greeks and Trojans of Homer. A guilt based culture is one in which an individual believes that the Gods or God is not mocked. The deity(ies) know(s) all and the individual knows in his own mind what he has done or not done. The stoics and early christians would be examples. The opinions of others are meaningless. I believe that it is easier to maintain freedom in a culture where the people are self governing in the individual sense (answering to a higher authority) as well in the corporate sense.
This applies to the openly religious as well. The person who seems to worship God in order to gain publilc approval is practicing a shame based culture and not a guilt based.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, of course a good many are: Intellectually/culturally. There are literally scores of websites and advocacy groups dedicated to just this such that I could pull them up with the simple push of a button. Moreover, if there is anything more taboo than references to “religion” or religious culture in education, or the media (beyond scandal) I am at a lose to figure out what they are. Religion being the driving force behind the greater part of Western culture, I’d say there is either an agenda at work or extremely bad luck.</p>
<p>If you mean “physical” ghettos, you have missed the point.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps we can establish that there is a subtle difference between, on the one hand, a debate over whether or not missionaries should be put on the dole or, on the other, whether or not a specific issue, like “faith-based-initiatives” (a social program with the object of helping those "down-on-their-luck) would in fact be putting missionaries on the dole. The latter seems to me a legitimate debate, the former, a canard–though a common one.</p>
<p>
Mardad,
If <em>seems</em> becomes <em>is</em>, I agree with your very interesting post.</p>
<p>FS,</p>
<p>If the spector of missionaries qua missionaries being supported with state funds is a canard, that’s because of past efforts of groups like the ACLU that argued successfully that (a) the 14th amendment made the 1st amendment applicable to the states, and (b) funding the activities of one religious group in preference to another can constitute the establishment of a religion. Your own post #38 implies that you accept neither of these principles. If that’s the case, you have a lot of company. That’s why I joined the ACLU. Eternal vigilance really is the price of liberty.</p>
<p>Vigilance indeed!
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203936[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203936</a></p>
<p>It is not clear to me that the 14th amendment addresses the intent of the 1st. It simply extends it, whatever it means along with the others, whatever they mean, into the states. The original meaningno established religion of America (i.e. The Church of England) and the protection of religious liberty and free speech for Americansremains.</p>
<p>The change in the modern SCs meaning was largely the result of over-zealous Protestantism resulting in anti-Catholic paranoia, as Im sure you know.</p>
<p>a “social” initiative helping those down on their luck- well often, it comes at the price of having someone else’s religion shoved down their throat</p>
<p>Are you saying that non[religious, secular people cannot help others as well?</p>
<p>Also, I can find hundreds upon hundreds of hate mongering religious websites saying that if I don’t believe a certain way, I am going to hell, no matter what kind of wonderful person I am…</p>
<p>And there are many people that want to take over our democracy and “return” it to a religious theocracy as it were</p>
<p>FS- you talk as if the “religious” people are all innocent and have absolutely no agenda themselves, and I will politely disagree, look around you, many have a very clear agenda of making this a Christian, and not just any Christian, but their version of Christianing, of making this a nation of “believers” with laws representing their way of viewing the bible, the taliban-like way of having rules and regulations mirror biblical teachings</p>
<p>Good thing they choose to ignore parts that talk about wife beating, and just go for the ones that suit them, such as hating gays…</p>
<p>So please, FS, don’t be so disengenous as to ignore the fact that many Christians want everyone to be just like them, and want laws to reflect that, to do otherwise is not being very intellectual intuitive</p>
<p>And, before you go after me, I don’t care what religion anyone is, so long as it stays in their church and home, and so long as they are kind, gentle and caring of others, which can be done without trying to convert the world.</p>
<p>Keep a Christmas tree at City Hall, just don’t have a preacher standing there telling me how to be</p>
<p>
No. Im saying that religious people can do it as well as secular people as I am not a bigot one way or the other. Good deeds are good deeds no matter the agent of goodness.
DO you, CGM, think religious people cannot help others? If so, what does that say about your idea of human nature and human liberty? A sad world-view, indeed.</p>
<p>
I dont ignore it at all, I agree and what’s more, I detest it; but then, this is the nature of people and power, not religion or government. As to those who want everyone to be just like them they will be in for a very rough ride in this life with little to no success and, as for me, I am largely thankful for this fact of life.</p>
<p>
Not at all. Equally guilty and innocent, as individuals; but than, religious people are not trying to prevent, say, atheists from using school grounds, they are not trying to re-write history by ignoring the fact that the history of Western Culture is largely the history of religion (Christian, Jewish and Islamic, but largely Christian) as an institution and people of faith as they applied both their belief and their knowledge of the world to society; their beliefs were the epistemic cause of their scientific and cultural discoveries and innovations, from cave paintings to the theory of gravity and beyond.</p>
<p>
Are we talking about sex, or religion how about if we just confine religion to the bedroom? It seems, in your America, certain ideas are acceptable in the public square and others should be confined behind the closed doors of the home, Church, Synagogue or Mosque so as to not offend the highly sensitive (but liberal) secularist. Are you a member of the ACLU, as well? I think I see a pattern forming here.</p>
<p>
This speaks volumes regarding your definition of tolerance. This, spoken from someone living in San Franciso where it is perfectly acceptable for people to express their sexuality in various forms of dress and undress in city-sanctioned parades, yet heaven forbid someone from expressing their religion in public.</p>