Posted on 08/09/2005 6:45:50 PM PDT by Crackingham
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that allows the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors to exclude a local witch from leading the prayer at open meetings.
The ACLU of Virginia yesterday filed its petition with the court seeking to reverse a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, said ACLU attorney Rebecca K. Glenberg.
"Our position is that the 4th Circuit did something really extreme in its decision," she said. "It held that it was acceptable for a government body to treat people differently because of religion."
Cynthia Simpson, a witch who lives in Chesterfield, requested in 2002 to be placed on a list of religious leaders invited to deliver the invocation at meetings of the Board of Supervisors. So far, her request has been denied.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
They opposed the idea of a nationally established Church. Many states had established churches at the time of our country's founding.
Check out this link from Answers.com. At the bottom of the page is the list of established American state churches and the time of their disestablishment.
You're clueless. That's why you wonder.
And Jefferson assured at least one church that the state having a different established church would not impinge on the religious freedom of that church. Danbury Baptists, where the term "wall of separation" comes from.
bump toread comments later
> You're clueless.
Indeed?
Thomas Jefferson acknowledged Common Law's pre-Christian origins in this letter to Thomas Cooper on February 10, 1814:
"For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement of England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of the Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law...This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians...".
Those wacky founders and their anti-God agenda at work, I guess... not a *single* law against worshipping other gods!
Since there are different perceptions, any deity tends to be perceived differently. Different people therefore arrive at different interpretations of any universal "Truth." Many of these interpretations are mutally exclusive. Since we are only using our interpretation of "Truth," no one can lay claim to any one interpretation being the real one.
So how can anyone know anything about God? We can know God through His effects.
Your links states various things it purports to know about God, such as goodness, perfection, infinity, omnipresence, immutability and eternity.
Even the same incarnations of "His effects" can be interpreted differently. We can't even get multiple people to agree on what happened at a vehicle accident site.
For all we know, the Hare Krishnas have it right. Or the Wiccans.
No, an expression of our trust in God. Sometimes words mean what they mean.
Framing document? I don't seem to remember that Deist teminology in the Constitution...
It's not. It's in the Declaration of Independence. And about a thousand other documents of the age. By the way, I don't recall any mention of forbidding Christianity in the Constitution either.
Odin.
If that's what you want to call Him.
Be better if the people asked to do a job followed the *Consitituion,*
You mean like that part about "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF"?
One wonders, then, why the legal system in this country is based on that of the pagan Saxons and not on the Ten Commandments, then.
Our legal system is based on English common law, which owes much to Roman law, which was spread to northern Europe by ... Christians! You know, those Christians that are part of the Holy Roman Empire? The Empire that DEFINED Western culture? Yeah, that one.
Keep running back to the well for those Jefferson quotes. You'll run out of them before I run out of the mountain of quotes from the other Founders to the first Supreme Court chief justice, on and on I could go.
Rhetorical hair-splitting. Our principles are founded in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Any other argument is pseudo-intellectual masturbation.
Same for the Bible.
If pagans or Wiccans want to be authentic, they should be authentic. But they aren't, it's faddish and done primarily for side benefits (such as the obligatory sexual license) or for effect, a kind of adolescent rebellion.
I know a lot of Wiccans with several variations of practice, and you haven't described any of them.
Just point them here. They usually shut up after the irrefutable evidence from Rehnquist.
http://www.belcherfoundation.org/wallace_v_jaffree_dissent.htm
Game over.
HAHAHA! And what would THAT be??? Where the heck do you live anyway, that the Ecclesiarchy comes knocking on your door and whacking you over the head for impure thoughts?
You're letting your hypberbole shanghai common sense.
As for my definition of Christianity, whereever mine differs from Christ's I am willing to change, where it matches Christ's I pray that threat of death or hell could not dissuade me from it.
"People don't know how to be respectful and polite, and respect the religions of others? What's with this hair trigger intolerance?"
Interesting that you would put it that way.
But then, even more interesting is your follow up.
"Since the vast majority of people in the US believe in God in one way or another, why should the tiny minority of atheists rule who gets to say what and when? I don't think so.
And as for witches, when a large percentage of US citizens follow Wicca, get back to me at that point."
So, let's get this straight, They should be polite to you, and those who believe as you do, but you don't feel a need to show them the same courtesy you demand of them?
Quite frankly, it's attitudes like this that lead me away from the idea of Prayer/Religion in Schools, Government, etc.
If, and when this strangely dysfunctional idea that people should blissfully go along while some Religions should "go to the back of the bus" while others are given preferential treatment ends "get back to me at that point."
The same Congress first used public money to print Bibles.
Your point?
>> What... a desire to "stick it" to Commies?
> No, an expression of our trust in God.
ERRR. The "In God We Trust" bit came about in the 1950's as, officially, a poorly-conceived thumb in the eye to Commies (in reality, just the usual sort of pander one comes to expect from politicians). It replaced the much more accurate and magnificent E Pluribus Unum.
>> Framing document? I don't seem to remember that Deist teminology in the Constitution...
> It's not. It's in the Declaration of Independence.
The DoI is not a "framing document" for the US. That would be the Constitution.
>By the way, I don't recall any mention of forbidding Christianity in the Constitution either.
By the way, I don't recall any mention of forbidding Wicca in the Constitution either.
> Our legal system is based on English common law
Which was derived from *Saxon* common law. Roman law formed the backbone of French Napoleonic Code, buit not English or American law (outside Louisiana, which still uses the Napoleonic Code). You're not French, are you?
> The Empire that DEFINED Western culture?
That would be the *Roman* empire, with a lot of help from the Greeks, Scandihoovians and Germans. Buncha pagans.
will see what I can find once I get home tonight if I remember. I can recall two or maybe 3, so that really isn't "numerous," but you get the point.
> Keep running back to the well for those Jefferson quotes.
Doesn't matter who said it. History is what it is, and the fact is that American law derived from English common law, derived from pagan Saxon common law. Deal with it. You owe your civilization in large part to a bunch of wacky German Viking-types. Grow up, learn to deal with it and get on with life.
Repeat it as much as you want if it makes you feel better. Won't make it any more true.
"Hier stehe ich. Gott helfe mir. Ich kann nicht anders."
Martin Luther was famous for saying essentially the same thing as you. After saying that at the Diet of Worms, he was declared "Vogel Frei," free for anyone to kill without sin. He would have probably been killed on the spot if he hadn't left the Diet early, before the decision was handed down. It was only the help of a powerful prince that saved him from later capture and punishment by kidnapping him on his way from Worms and hiding him away in Wartburg Castle.
BTW, I've been to the Worms, where he defended his theses, and to where he attended the Augustinian convention in Heidelberg.
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