These Christian Bible-freaks don’t let up. They continue to question the separation between Church and State which our Founding Fathers were clearly in favor of, arguing that it is not spelled out in our Constitution. Here is what Thomas Jefferson, the main author of our Constitution, wrote with regard to this issue:
“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, & 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 & State.”
Personally, my opinion is that if there is a movement toward tearing down the separation between Church and State, which no doubt there is, then let it be so; under one condition, and that is that RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS PAY TAXES JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!! They can’t have it both ways. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
DENVER – Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck has questioned the separation of government and religion, drawing criticism from Democrats who last week chided another tea party candidate for the same view.
Buck’s opponents have been circulating a clip of him from a 2009 GOP forum in which he won applause from a conservative crowd at Colorado Christian University when he said the Constitution doesn’t require church and state to be separate.
“I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution,” Buck said on the video. “While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that’s sanctioned by the government, it doesn’t mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion.”
Democrats spread the Buck video after Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was panned for questioning in a debate last week whether the separation of church and state is in the Constitution.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this week called Buck’s remark “extreme” and “egregious.”
Democratic allies also spread a clip from Buck earlier this year in which he repeated his opposition to abortion rights. Buck said he believes the Supreme Court wrongly cited privacy rights in its Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
Buck clarified his church-and-state position Tuesday on CNN.
“I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer, a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.
“What I have said is that I think the federal government and we as a society have come too far in trying to separate good organizations that perform good functions for people just based on the fact one has a religious association and one doesn’t,” Buck said.
Buck’s opponent, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, has defended his campaign’s reliance use of old Buck remarks, saying it’s fair to highlight Buck positions that are outside the mainstream.
Republicans are digging into Bennet’s past, too.
The GOP this week passed to reporters financial disclosure reports showing that Bennet, a former Denver Public Schools superintendent, owned stock in JP Morgan Chase, a firm involved in a 2008 financing deal to cover a $400 million gap in the school system’s pension fund.
Bennet supported the proposed deal to the Denver school board, which unanimously backed it in hopes of saving tens of millions of dollars in annual debt costs. A Bennet spokesman said Wednesday that the senator’s financial stake in JP Morgan Chase came in a fund Bennet didn’t control.
Bennet sold stock in JP Morgan Chase in January 2009.
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Online:
“Who says that the separation of Church and State precludes the moral values of anyone?”
It precludes the moral values of religious people. Your interpretation of Jefferson’s statement provides complete moral freedom to influence government only to non-religious people. Jefferson himself was religious. Was he saying that he was unfit to lead the country? No. He was our third president.
“Our government does NOT interfere in people’s rights to worship and stays out of the affairs of religious institutions.”
Not when it prohibits the free exercise of religion in public schools. Not when it takes the ten commandments off the wall of the court room. You think no religious people go to school, or no religious people go to court?
Why do you insist on mixing religion and government? Again, it was NOT the intent of our forefathers to mix the two – remember, religious institutions pay no taxes; this was NOT coincidence. There is a reason why religious institutions don’t pay taxes, and that is that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. wanted a clear delineation between government and the individual’s religious choices. Religions are NOT intended to influence government, just as government is not intended to influence religion. Neither you as a religious individual or me as a non-religious one need our government to invoke morality. And by the way, Jefferson was not religious, as you stated. Jefferson, like Washington, Franklin, Adams, Paine, etc. was a deist. He and the others believed in a Supreme Being, but not in the Christian God. As I’m sure you’re aware, most of the prominent statesmen that founded our government were Freemasons. I have researched this topic extensively and know this to be true. So you can call these people religious if it makes you feel better, but the fact is they were NOT religious as you may define religion, which is probably from a Christian perspective.
By the free exercise of religion in public schools I suppose you mean school prayer. Hopefully you’re not referring to the teaching of Creationism, which is as valid a theory as Noah living to the ripe old age of 900 years as stated in the Bible; along with the flawed belief by some that the universe is only several thousand years old. Again, public schools, which are run by our government, do not influence religion one way or the other. Allowing school prayer is unconstitutional because there are children who come from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, backgrounds, etc. and if one group is favored the others are discriminated against. If parents want their children to attend a school which reinforces what they are taught at home then they should enroll their kids in a private school of their particular faith. Once again, the Ten Commandments come from the Bible, and the Bible is obviously a religious text which has no place in a government building. Do churches have our Constitution plastered on their walls; no they don’t. Why would the Ten Commandments be on a courtroom wall? You can’t have it both ways.
This complete separation between church and state is never played out practically, and is unreasonable to expect. This is not what Jefferson intended. Someone’s values are always hindering someone else’s values all the time. Discrimination is a byproduct of every law on the books and every new “right” that is endorsed. Further, there is no reason that a man should deny the origin of his values which he bring with him into the governmental office he fills. To require him to be morally indifferent is to prohibit him from the free exercise of his religion. Those who cry about discrimination simply want to impose a different set of values on someone else, thereby discriminating against the moral values of particular people. There’s no getting around it.
Who says that the separation of Church and State precludes the moral values of anyone? One thing has nothing to do with the other. Again, the intent is to keep religion and government separate; obviously the individual cannot be separated from his or her own moral values, whatever they may be. Our government does NOT interfere in people’s rights to worship and stays out of the affairs of religious institutions. Therefore, why is it unreasonable to expect religious institutions to stay out of governmental affairs? Religious people and religious institutions need to “get it,” and stay out of other people’s business. They also need to stop pushing their religious “morality” on others via our government.
Basically, what Jerfferson was saying was that a man’s religious values are free to infiltrate the government, but the government is not free to infiltrate the man’s religious values. And why should the man who gets into office, deny the origin of his values? There is no reason. Further, the government should not establish or endorse a religion as the state religion. But, religion is still free to affect the government. This being evidenced by the guarantee that government shall not prohibit the free exercise thereof. Prohibiting prayer is schools, for example, is prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The wall of separation Jefferson refers to is meant to protect the person’s free exercise, not the government’s will upon religion.
Your assessment is incorrect. What Jefferson was saying, quite simply, is that religion and government (Church and State) are separate entities and must remain as such. In other words, that governments cannot interfere with (or influence) the individual’s right to religion and that the individual’s religion cannot interfere with (or influence) government. This is why religions are exempt from taxation. Of course, I realize that religious people, and more importantly religious institutions, don’t want to accept this. Religious institutions want to influence government in issues such as the teaching of creationism in public schools, school prayer, abortion, etc. Yet at the same time, they want to be free from taxation. Again, they can’t have it both ways.