LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's a NYT Magazine article about the church-state problem, and possible solutions to it.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This New York Times Op-ed talks about the upcoming Supreme Court selection:

July 4, 2005
The Church-State Wall Is the Best Protection Against Religious Strife
By ADAM COHEN

The wall of separation between church and state is in real danger of falling now that Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring. The Supreme Court narrowly reaffirmed its commitment to that wall last week in its Ten Commandments rulings, but only because Justice O'Connor voted to maintain that wall. If her replacement votes the other way, there may soon be more crosses, Ten Commandments monuments and prayers on government property.

There is a growing debate about what impact that would have on American life. That debate subtly found its way into last week's decisions. The justices generally focus more on what they think the Constitution means than on how their decisions are likely to be received. But two of last week's opinions made oblique reference to the rise of the religious right and its increasing anger over the court's religion rulings.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

The Supreme Court will decide if a granite monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol and framed copies of commandments in two Kentucky courthouses are allowed.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Christianity Today article about mixing religion and politics:

George W. Bush is not Lord. The Declaration of Independence is not an infallible guide to Christian faith and practice. Nor is the U.S. Constitution, nor the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights. "Original intent" of America's founders is not the hermeneutical key that will guarantee national righteousness. The American flag is not the Cross. The Pledge of Allegiance is not the Creed. "God Bless America" is not the Doxology.

Sometimes one needs to state the obvious—especially at times when it's less and less obvious.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

"This American Life" in Western Massachusetts is currently broadcasting the church/state episode.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Kit's Concatenation is another great church/state oriented blog, written by twistedchick. Definitely worth a visit.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Former President Bill Clinton was interviewed by Larry King on Wednesday. Here's what he has to say about mixing religion and politics:

In the Wednesday night interview, Clinton also discussed the impact of religious groups on politics, his humanitarian projects and his relationship with former President George H.W. Bush.

When asked whether the Christian conservative movement -- which makes up much of President Bush's political base -- concerns him, Clinton replied: "I think they should be worried about it. Because I think whenever religious people try to exercise political power in God's name, and to say that they have the whole truth and they can impose it ... that's always hazardous.

"Our country is the most religious, big country on Earth, with more different faiths flourishing and more regular observance because we haven't had a state religion," he said. "And we haven't had politics as religion. And we haven't had politicians claiming to be in possession of the whole truth."

But religious influence in politics comes and goes, Clinton added.

He admitted that Democrats often are uncomfortable with discussions of the moral dilemmas many religious people feel. "And so we have ceded the ground of too many voters to the religious right," he said. "But that's our fault. We should engage in this debate."

From CNN.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY brigidsblest)

Drawing the line between churches and politics

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

A member of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

( more behind the cut )

The article can be found at:
http://www.cleveland.com/letters/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1117532001135062.xml&coll=2


Cross-posted to my own journal.

I think that hearing this from a Christian pastor says a lot about how far things have gone, don't you?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

Did this judge flunk his constitutional law classes?


http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050526/NEWS01/505260481

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Although the church-state situation is grim and getting grimmer (especially if the Senate Republicans trigger the nuclear optionConstitutional option, there are Christians who are still practicing what Jesus preached. Here are a couple of sites where they do:

Jesus on the Family
The Wittenburg Door

I want to see if Barns & Yarns has the latest issue of the magazine- there are some articles in the current issue that look quite interesting: "Why should you spend four years and $100,000 when Jesus will probably return before you graduate?" and "Christian Bookstore Survival Tips: Be careful around the ceramic baby Jesuses. Breaking one is bad karma."

Yep, levelheaded and humorous, too!

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Daily Kos diary by Fredrick Clarkson talks about the growing attention to the convergence of Church and State:

What happens when church merges with state? What happens when government agencies promote one religious view over another? What happens when one version of Christianity is promoted over another by government agents?

Look no further than the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colorado where conservative evangelical Christianity is aggressively promoted, conflated with the mission of the Air Force, cadets of other faiths are frequently insulted and forced to choose between mandatory academy functions and their religious holidays, and now a Lutheran chaplain has been fired for daring to criticize the culture of religious bigotry, and religious supremacism protected and enforced on campus.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been on the case for months, and so now are major newspapers in the nation. ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

I suppose that I should insert a bit of clarity here for our many new readers. I think that the 'no Bush bashing' rule has become a bit of a stumbling block and perhaps the source of some misunderstandings. Let's correct our course a bit, shall we?

It is impossible to discuss Christian extremists (or what Fredrick Clarkson has called 'religious supermacists') without politics (and Bush) leaching into the discussion. In fact, if it weren't for the marriage between the Religious Right and the Republican Party, I seriously doubt that this community would have much to discuss. It is clear that the purpose of this collision between religion and politics is to chip away at the foundation of our government- like termites chewing away at a wooden house, until it collapses from being gutted from within.

Things like chipping away at the Establishment Clause (separation of church and state) by creating Faith Based initiatives, attacking 'activist judges', that do not kowtow to the desires of the Dominionists to have Biblical based laws, the slow corrosion of our educational systems with the one-two punch of No Child Left Behind and the ID versus Actual Science debate, and the attacks on our social security, environment, and even our pocketbooks with the tax cuts for the rich being shifted to a bigger burden for the vanishing middle class to pay... it all ties together. Every one of these, and many more seeming unrelated little things are termites eating away at this country and our constitution.

The destruction of our country is being guided by End-times-addled people who want to dominate, and then destroy our world to hasten Christ's return. They have said this themselves, if you follow the links to the various sites we have listed.

Where does Bush stand in all this? He is the figurehead of the religious supermacists, as well as the 'divinely ordained and guided' director of all this slow destruction. That "Bush Fish" is just a blatant example of what has been brewing for years under the surface- within the ranks of the Religious right- and out of the media mainstream: that the religious supermacists truly believe that the President is merely one step away from being a divinely ordained 'king' of some new Crusade- once they get those messy judges and the Constitution out of the way. They truly believe this. Heck, they even have "Presidential Prayer Team" that devotes itself full time to praying for the President. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is the first time that such a thing has been so blatantly public or so blatantly one-sided.

Yes, I know that sometimes this sounds like foil-hattery. I wish it was. It isn't. People are blind to all the little holes being chewed in our country's carefully crafted foundation, and they poo-poo the folks like me who have been following this stuff for decades, seeing the patterns and the grass roots and the monies being built up, looking at their parallel universe which has been, until recently, well hidden from the mainstream.

It is OK to criticize this administration. It is still legal (barely) to do so. But we must also avoid stepping over the line from criticism to outright bashing. The line can sometimes be difficult to see, but like someone said about obscenity, we know it when we see it. This community has grown exponentially in the last few months, and we are fine tuning our moderation guidelines. So, please bear with us. We'll find a proper and steady course, and go from there.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

"H.R. 235, a measure introduced by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), would allow clergy to endorse candidates from the pulpit and still retain a tax exemption of their house of worship."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This should be interesting: NPR started a multipart series that addresses the insistence of the Christian Right that we are a Christian nation. The series continues this afternoon on "All Things Considered" and concludes tomorrow morning. It will be interesting to see what conclusion they come to.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

From Oregon:

Guest Viewpoint: Prayer breakfasts have a history of excluding faiths

By Matthew Dennis
For The Register-Guard

Since the beginning of the republic itself, the role of religion in American life has been controversial - even as the United States supposedly became a more secular society, and even in Oregon, statistically the least churched state in the union.

A case in point is the annual Eugene-Springfield Mayors' Prayer Breakfast, the subject of an April 10 column by Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin. The local event is an example of a larger phenomenon, which includes annual mayors', governors' and even presidential prayer breakfasts. Many occur on the official National Day of Prayer on the first Thursday in May. This year that falls on May 5 and competes with an altogether different occasion, Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of diversity.

Something billed as "The Mayors' Prayer Breakfast" raises questions. Is it a public, official event, sponsored by an elected mayor and, by implication, the city he or she represents? If it features prayer, whose prayers are featured? Is it inclusive, or is it exclusive, both of non-Christian faiths and of nonreligious Americans? Might it violate First Amendment requirements for the separation of church and state? Or is it simply an exercise of religious freedom, guaranteed by that same First Amendment?

The roots of the Mayors' Prayer Breakfast go back to the early 1950s, in the context of the Cold War, when a joint resolution of Congress, signed by President Harry Truman, declared an annual National Day of Prayer. This was the era in which "under God" was spliced into the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower presided over the first National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Soon prayer breakfasts multiplied and became fixtures in state capitals and other communities across the country, sometimes set for the National Day of Prayer and sometimes held on other dates.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article talks about the desire of the Religious Right to use the judiciary to dissolve the wall between church and state:

Religious right seeks judiciary that dissolves church-state separation

BY DICK POLMAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - Religious conservatives, emboldened by President Bush's re-election and confident of their political clout, are not interested in merely overhauling the judiciary. Ideally, they are seeking a judiciary that would remove the wall of separation between church and state.

This ambition is stated clearly in numerous legal briefs currently on file at the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a pending case; they seek removal of "a Berlin wall" that is "out of step with this nation's religious heritage." In fact, their leaders argue in interviews that the church-state barrier is a "myth" invented by the high court in 1947, thanks to a twisted interpretation of our founding documents.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Many people in the Dominionist movement either homeschool their kids or send them to Christian schools. Many of these schools use David Barton's "America's Godly Heritage" as a teaching text about the founders of America and its supposed Christian underpinings. His book contains many quotes purported to be from our founding fathers- including Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, and others.

Barton's work has been quoted extensively by evangelicals, teachers, and even members of Congress.

But evidence and research has revealed that a good lot of what Barton has written is questionable, or even false. One Baptist site has even publised a critical commentary on his work.

David Barton, in his taped presentation called America's Godly Heritage, peddles the proposition that America is a "Christian Nation," legally and historically. He also asserts that the principle of church-state separation, while not in the Constitution, has systematically been used to rule religion out of the public arena, particularly the public school system. This is not a new argument, but Barton is especially slick in his presentation. His presentation has just enough ring of truth to make him credible to many people. It is, however, laced with exaggerations, half- truths, and misstatements of fact. His citation to supporting research is scant at best and at times non-existent.

The whole article including the refutations of his 'quotes' is worth a read.

This leads to the question: why are there so many charlatans who don religous plumage and so baldly lie to believers? They are present in many faiths, but it seems that evangelical Christianity attracts them like squirrels to nuts. Maybe it can be traced back to Paul himself, whom some critics peg as being the first evangelical flim-flam artist- after all, he never even met Christ in person, and he was avidly pursuing the destruction of the faith before his conversion on the road to Damascus. (Maybe it wasn't a 'conversion at all...) Maybe his model has pretty much set up the assembly line for those who follow him.
Thoughts?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

And this wasn't publicized during the 2000 election WHY????

http://www.snopes.com/religion/jesusday.htm

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The New Republic has an article about how fundementalism is splitting the Republican Party.

For conservatives of faith, such pluralism can allow error to flourish--and immorality to become government policy--and therefore must be limited. A conservative of doubt, however, does not regard the existence of such pluralism as a problem. He sees it as an unavoidable fact of modernity, an invitation to lives that are more challenging and autonomous than in more traditional societies. Even when conservatives of doubt disagree with others' moral convictions, they recognize that, in a free, pluralist society, those other views deserve a hearing. So a conservative who believes abortion is always immoral can reconcile herself to a polity in which abortion is still legal, if regulated. Putting government power unequivocally on the side of one view of morality--especially in extremely controversial areas--must always be balanced against the rights and views of citizens who dissent. And, precisely because complete government neutrality may be impossible on these issues, government should tread as lightly as possible. The key in areas of doubt is to do as little harm as possible. Which often means, with respect to government power, doing as little as possible.

Doubt, in other words, means restraint. And restraint of government is the indispensable foundation of human freedom. The modern liberal European state was founded on such doubt. In the seventeenth century, men like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke looked at the consequences of various faiths battling for control of the moralizing state--and they balked. They saw civil war, religious extremism, torture, burnings at the stake, police states, and the Inquisition. They saw polities like Great Britain's ravaged by sectarian squabbles over what the truth is, how it is discovered, and how to impose it on a society as a whole. And they made a fundamental break with ancient and medieval political thought by insisting that government retreat from such areas--that it leave the definition of the good life to private citizens, to churches uncontaminated by government, or to universities that would seek and discuss competing views of the truth.

In the modern world, where disagreement among citizens is even deeper and more diverse than three centuries ago, conservatives of doubt see their tradition as more necessary than ever. As the fusion of religious fundamentalism with politics has destroyed Muslim society and politics, so, these conservatives fear, it threatens Western freedom as well--in subtler, milder, Christian forms. Conservatives of doubt are not necessarily atheists or amoralists. Many are devout Christians who embrace a strong separation of church and state--for the sake of religion as much as politics. Others may be Oakeshottian skeptics, or Randian individualists, or Burkean pragmatists, or libertarian idealists. But they all agree that the only solution to deep social disagreement is not a forced supremacy of a majority or minority, but an attempt to keep government as neutral as possible, power as close to people as possible, and as much economic power in the hands of the private sector as possible.

For such conservatives, divided government is therefore critical. Judicial checks on democratic majorities are as vital as legislative checks on executive abuse. (They are just as queasy removing such parliamentary checks as the filibuster.) The same goes for keeping policy-making as close as possible to states and localities. Why? Because human knowledge is fallible, and those closest to the issues are more likely to get solutions right than people a long way away. The notion that the federal government should actively endorse one religion's perspective on social policy would appall such conservatives. So would the idea that individual states cannot legitimately experiment with policies on which there is no national consensus--such as stem-cell research or marriage rights.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

" A group of ministers representing about 17 Baptist churches in the Louisville area and a national Baptist committee that supports separation of church and state yesterday called on a Louisville church to cancel its planned "Justice Sunday" tomorrow.

""We see 'Justice Sunday' as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island," the Rev. Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church, said during a news conference yesterday."