TGJ, your camp commits the same sort of abuse to the English language and to our Constitution that the anti-gun lobbyists use. They make comments along the lines of, "You must be for violence, because you are against gun control." That's similar to the JBS or 700 club style assertion that the law needs to be explicitly Christian in order to defend Christianity, or you must be a communist if you believe in keeping religion and state separate.
Anti-gunners say things like, "You can't interpret the Constitution literally," which is similar to your argument that the First Amendment prevents any sort of requirement of separation of religion and state. It's completely backwards, but that serves the anti-gunner purpose, and inverting Constitutional meaning serves your Christian nationalist cause, just as well. Anti-gunners argue that to be safe, guns must be removed from the hands of ordinary people. Your camp argues that to be secure, morality must be upheld by explicitly Judeo-Christian law; of course you don't delve into doctrines and dogma because that would reveal the house of flimsy queue cards on which your arguments are based. To your camp, the faith of the common people is not enough. It must be reinforced through the powerful arms of federal and state governments, imposed on citizens so that no lapses of moral certainty might be suffered in our courtrooms.
But in every state constitution of the union, in our own federal constitution, and in James Madison's prodigious commentary about first amendment issues, we see a powerful commitment to a wall of separation between religion and state, between dogma and law, between sectarian beliefs and government. Our laws clearly block any effort to name a preference for one religion or another from our legal language to our court rulings and our treatment of individual citizens. But that doesn't stop your camp! In the face of English statements with crystal clarity like, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," anti-gun people often say things along the lines of "The Constitution does not apply to the states." So does your camp when it argues that states' rights permit the establishment of the 10 commandments as the very foundation of our own law.
Like the anti-gun lobby poses with hunters and fishermen to convey a faux friendliness toward ordinary "sport gunners," your camp would have young Americans and the world believe that all Christians in America do not support the idea of keeping religion and government separate. Your camp cries persecution and punishment for the limits that have been placed on your frail shoulders. But I can tell you that there are devout and faithful Christians in this country who number among some of the most fierce defenders of this important concept. Most of them happen to be less attention-seeking than your camp. Most of them do not have multi-million dollar TV broadcasts from which to exhort their virtual "congregations" to abandon the Constitution, while raking in millions and millions of dollars from the weak and defenseless who think they are helping to secure their own salvation and peace of mind through donations. The truly devout believe that the future is in God's hands, not any human's, and certainly not in any earthly form of government. These are the men of true faith, who see no need to defend God in the courtroom or on the battlefield. They only see a need to defend the people from government. God, their faith has convinced them, is almighty.
As with the best of the anti-gunners, your camp quotes the founding fathers out of context. Your camp cites historic opinions of leaders which had no legal binding on our government before and after the Constitution was written. Your camp links the Puritan movement to our current government. Your camp blurs the lines between culture and religion. And your camp rewrites history for its own purposes. Your camp assumes that because most Americans have always trusted in Jehovah, and believe in Jesus Christ as their savior, that we have a de facto government with religious underpinnings, or that we must place those beliefs into law or else lose them. If you believe that Americans would lose their faith without an establishment of religion, you would be unable to find any hope for the future. Your camp can present no material from either the Constitution, any of its amendments, or the Declaration of Independence to show that this country is established as a legally "Christian nation," or that its most important laws are directly based on the Ten Commandments. So your camp finds devotional comments made by our founding fathers while they were in church, writing letters to church men, or leading their fellow countrymen in prayer -- to prove that what they chose not to place in the Constitution is in fact what they intended, and even the most important thing that they intended to convey! Yes, if you can believe that, you can also be persuaded to give up your guns.
And so the attack on our Constitution continues from all sides.
You can find nothing from our core founding documents to even suggest that we have an established form of Christian government. Yet the writings of each of our Founding Fathers, even the most devout among them, demonstrate a profound mistrust of establishments of religion via government. And the historic record bears this out as well, given the terror spawned on the European continent century after century -- as well as England and its colonies -- by religiously-motivated warfare. What we have is a Christian culture whose faith is one of the important powerhouses of freedom in this country. In fact, Christian faith -- their personal freedom of conscience -- is explicitly protected by our legal and civic-minded defense of separation of religion and state. No where on earth are Christians more free, more protected in their personal beliefs, or more able to spread their faith. And this we can attribute to the First Amendment. And we can also attribute it to the Second Amendment. Those who would tear asunder either one are grave threats to our nation's freedom, and therefore the world's.
Why is your camp able to bear so much rotten fruit? Fear. Without a doubt it is fear.
Americans are struggling with the internal and external threats we face. Christian nationalists have searched for a simple solution to our problems. Establishing Christianity retroactively and proactively in our government is deemed to be a simple solution to all of our problems. At best, this is a retreat from the political clarity and brilliance of our Founding Fathers, who were educated by the very best the Enlightenment and the Reformation had to offer. At worst, it is a convenient means for manipulating the devout into pursuing a destructive and undemocratic political agenda that could end in monarchy or pure theocracy. You may doubt it, but think of the political swamps from which we emerged. They are waiting for us, ever threatening in their stench and depths. In your camp, where devotion ends, a form of dangerous Christian nationalism begins, one that has nothing in terms of true Christian values in mind. The Christian Identity movement is not far beyond that, which teaches that Anglo Saxons are the true lost tribes of Israel and modern "Jews" do not exist, taking a page stright from Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Again, if President Bush believed in this manipulative and unconstitutional pablum, I wouldn't be able to vote for him. In all of his campaigning, his quotes, his writings, and in what his wife and family have said about him, I understand him to be fully committed to the important principle of keeping state and religion separate. The ACLU is confused about this issue. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell would like nothing more than to equally confuse us about this issue. But President Bush has a clear concept of our Constitutional protection for religious freedom. There can be none better, so it's essential that a leader claiming to want the law to be upheld to understand this.
As you grapple with the moral threats we face in the 21st century, if you grasp the nearest "lifeline" offered you by the 700 Club and Coral Ridge Ministries, you'll pull America back into the Dark Ages. It's no accident that many Christian Americans understand this and stand firmly against the theocrats. It is their faith on which America stands, and as long as it does, people will have true freedom of religion in America. Intellectual and political freedom depend on religious freedom and the freedom to keep and bear arms. Even if in your simple view of the situation you feel that those of us who doubt Jerry Falwell's sincerity are part of a dark, sinister socialist movement, at least try to understand that we have just cause to fear the bearded men who would establish God's kingdom on earth with their own hands.
you must be a communist if you believe in keeping religion and state separate.
If you believe that the government has a right to ban prayer in school, the Ten Commandments, or the display of religious symbols anytime anywhere then you believe in Communist propaganda.
"In the USSR, the church is separated from the state." - Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In Article 52
Our laws clearly block any effort to name a preference for one religion or another from our legal language to our court rulings and our treatment of individual citizens.
This is simply not true. The plain language of the amendment says no such thing and the Founders intended otherwise when they wrote it. You may disregard the intent of the Founders but I do not. Many Supreme Court rulings affirmed that this is indeed a Christian Nation. Only when an anti-Catholic KKK member got on the Supreme Court was the interpretation of the establishment clause changed to the bolshevik principle and the government became hostile to Christianity. Conservatives will continue to work to undo this evil usurpation of power by the courts, making the government into an enemy of religion which prefers those who profess no religion at all, exactly the tyranny the founders feared.
The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government. - Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
Your ad hominem attacks against evangelical Christians reveal the real source of your concern. You don't like certain kinds of Christians so you want to keep them out of power.
Most of them do not have multi-million dollar TV broadcasts from which to exhort their virtual "congregations" to abandon the Constitution, while raking in millions and millions of dollars from the weak and defenseless who think they are helping to secure their own salvation and peace of mind through donations.
Do you have some kind of problem with free enterprise, because it sure sounds like you do. I know you certainly have a low opinion of the intelligence of the Christian Right. Could it be they are not as stupid as you think they are?
You fail to understand that even if Robertson and Falwell are con-men, that doesn't prove their argument wrong. You have to try and prove them wrong using evidence, something you have failed to do. I have presented plenty of evidence to support my own case, none of which you have impugned.
Fear. Without a doubt it is fear.
A healthy fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Establishing Christianity retroactively and proactively in our government is deemed to be a simple solution to all of our problems.
Once again, you falsely describe our position. Please speak only for yourself. We do not seek to make something America never was, nor do any new laws need to be written, only unconstitutional commie rulings by KKK judges need to be overturned. Conservatives are going to take our country back, by hook or by crook, and you are either with us, or you're with the ACLU.