Why is it that the fans of "separation of Church and State" almost always omit the second clause [in bold-face above]?
And yes, everyone — at least anyone who knows the spiritual/philosophical background of the Declaration and the Constitution — "knows that what the Founders were speaking of": as you nicely put it, "the prevention of the ability of any religious organization to have authority over the management of state affairs and of its people, particularly the governmental enforcement and support of a specific structural religious doctrine."
And the reverse is also true: that the government is constitutionally prohibited from taking upon itself the status of a religion to which all citizens must conform.
[I don't know about you, but it seems to me that our faux President right now is trying to "establish" a religion — a thoroughly despiritualized, desacralized, "secular" State Religion. And he proposes himself as its "pope."]
Again I note the Words of Christ Jesus: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God, what is God's." Clearly the Son of God instructs us that it is NORMATIVE for God ("religion") and Caesar ("government") to "stand apart" from each other.
I call this the "REALIST" view (for the Logos of Christ is the foundation of Reality (the Creation) and all things in it, preeminently man); and I do believe the Framers — all Christians to a man — were of this realist persuasion.
I do not believe that the Founders/Framers were "evil," dastardly people. They were REALISTS who knew that NO man and/or human institution of any kind can instantiate the Kingdom of God on earth. Indeed, such cannot be instantiated even in a monastery, let alone a vast, diverse, complex society such as what we have in the United States of America.
Such an expectation is the dream of an ideologue, of a denizen of a Second Reality....
It's clear to me that all the problems we suffer today in our society are fundamentally spiritual and cultural at their source — not "political." Thus there are NO political solutions. JMHO FWIW.
It seems we are a nation divided. We are divided into two main groups: Those who love and thankfully praise God for His blessings and try to live in His Law; and those who believe God is a total fiction than can be safely dismissed from consciousness and experience. I really do think it's just that simple.
But if we as a Nation do not go down on bended knee and pray God to help us, surely only the prospect of ruination extends before us....
Pray to God that He may heal our land, and restore it....
Thank you so very much, dear brother in Christ, for your beautiful, insightful essay/post. And for your very kind words.
Surely a rhetorical question. Yes?
It is because “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is not to be mentioned lest Liberals and Progressives should burst into flames (oh my!). It is because the pretense that “Separation of church and state” is completely exposed by “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” whenever it is proposed to mean anything other than “Congress shall make no law . . . “
0bama’s clumsy attempt to introduce the spiritual dry rot of Socialism and Materialism into our society by force is one of many such attempts, and may not have been a form of “Establishment” anticipated by the Founders, but it represents no new challenges to our understanding of the malice of tyranny’s evilness.
I could complain that you are getting a little ahead of me, but I think the more likely account is that we are once again engaged in completing each other’s thoughts as we occasionally are given to do.
"LIFE: that terminal affliction that, one day will, inevitably, "knock the chocks from under" our hulls as we rest here on these earthly "Shipbuilder's ways" -- and launch our incomplete hulls into the great voyage of eternity.Those of us who have been "Christened" with the Blood of the Lamb look forward to our glorious final "fitting out" and our incomprehensible eternal voyage with Him -- not with fear, but -- with calm assurance and, as "launch date" draws nigh, with excited anticipation.
I pity those who fear that end, and who, rightfully, can expect their ship to plunge beneath the dark waters -- and be forever a sunken, rotting hulk..."
TXnMA
Could it be that the above concept is one (of many) such vital messages that our seminaries have taught their victims graduates to stand behind their pulpit and de-emphasize and euphemize -- or totally disregard?
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I fear much of the blame for that "watering down of the Gospel" can be laid right at the feet of our ?deservedly? failing seminaries...
I'm on a tight deadline to design an archaeological presentation for Friday, but perhaps, later, I can find a few moments to share a list I (as a Deacon) made recently for our new pastor -- of similar "disregarded vital Scriptural concepts" that most of our churches gradually have been denied over the past few decades.