Nope, not trading one type of statist with another. We need freedom, period. Then individual religious folks can practice their respective religions as they see fit.
Well said.
The Christian ideology, because of the thousands of years of Catholic thought that aligned itself to Natural Law, is the only religion on earth that affirms Natural Law with all its tenants. The United States was founded on John Locke's theory of Natural Laws and Gods Laws. Cicero stated that Laws that go against Natural Law and God's Laws are unjust. So Christianity has always been the perfect religion for a Republic founded on Natural Law and God's Laws.
The Founders stated that the Republic is not viable without a moral and religious people. They would be appalled at promoting Wicca or any other sect that demeans Christianity and goes against Natural Law because it would be unconstitutional.
The reason for the first Amendment left freedom to all people, because that freedom is necessary for any religion that subscribes to Free Will. But just the title, "Religion" should not have recognition or acceptance when it goes against our Constitution. People should never be granted citizenship if they are Muslim or other cults that do not embrace this country's constitution.
Moral absolutes were also the bedrock of our laws. Only the Bible gives us those. Moral relativism destroys all freedom in every country it has ever been practiced.
I say learn from history (unlike the Progressives) and we need to get back to conforming to the ideals of the Constitution which means promoting moral absolutes in all the school systems in this nation. I guess that means promoting Christianity because that religion is the only one which has the same principles as our Founding documents. Our rights come from God so we have to be able to mention God in schools. We can do that (and have done that) without promoting a particular Christianity or Judaism. But atheism could not be promoted because the U.S. states our rights come from God and that denies our ideals.
When the Progressives eliminated moral absolutes and God from our schools, the moral relative, atheists took over. That is a religion also but is anathema to our constitution so needs to be booted. There is always a dominant "religion" in a culture where we are going from Christian to Atheism (or maybe Muslim--heaven forbid). There has to be a dominate moral code that is based on telling the truth, not cheating, stealing, respect for others property rights, otherwise we evolve into chaos, like most African nations where there is rampant sexual immorality, bribes for everything, etc.
Agreed, but with the caveat that most of the idiots whining about "theocracy" don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. According to them, the first Congress, passing a bill that was signed by President Washington, were "theocrats" because they used public funds to print and distribute Bibles among the population.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of FReepers - most of them secularist yahoos of some sort or another - who are basically ignorant when it comes to early American history.
%100 correct . This is nOT a theocracy nor will it ever be.