Tag Archives: Separation of church and state

01/16/12

Indiana’s Tyranny: To Require the Lord’s Prayer

In keeping with the long and ignoble tradition of plastering the Lord’s Prayer on every flat surface in creation, Christians in the Indiana legislature have introduced a bill to require reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of every school day.

I’ve no issue with the Lord’s Prayer itself. I suppose it’s as useful as anything in helping accomplish the bill’s goal of, “establishing character and becoming a good citizen.” But prayers seem a little weak for such an important job and there is no proof it works anyway.

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12/21/10

Judson Phillips: This Means War!

Separation of Church and State

THEY MIX LIKE OIL AND HOLY WATER - George Carlin was right.

After calls to unseat MN Dem Keith Ellison at least partly for being Muslim and advancing the swell idea the Constitution be amended to restrict the vote  only to property owners, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips has declared war on the Methodist Church.

He claims the Methodist Church is Marxist and “little more than the ‘religious’ arm of socialism” for preaching its support of the DREAM act, health care, joining “the Socialists, Communists and Marxists for the ‘One Nation’ March”, and a host of other unpatriotic sins. Because of these radical ideas he says he, “left the Methodist church over 35 years ago [and has] never looked back.”

His screed is nothing new. He goes off on such things regularly. However, buried deep in his blog post (which, in a display of  his commitment to his own brave words, is open to the public only via subscription) he throws out a challenge that I’m more than happy to accept – “Say, where are the liberal complaints on the separation of church and state? I guess their outrage is selective.”

For the record, I’m an atheist, which in Phillips’ eyes probably makes me Joseph Stalin incarnate. More than 35 years ago I not only left the Methodists, but all religion, and have never looked back. So here’s my ‘selective outrage’ about the separation of church and state:

I agree with Phillips that religion and politics in America would be vastly better off without churches taking sides in secular political matters. I believe their preaching secular issues more often muddies the water than clarifies it and it sometimes dampens criticism of church hierarchy.  However, I don’t see how that is any different from Phillips’ support of churches that espouse his opinions about matters of state.

Keep Out

POPULAR IDEAL - Keep 'em separate.

There’s a vast difference between churches – including those Phillips agrees with – preaching political values that align with their religion and trying to co-opt official non-religious matters of state. One is the freedom to practice religion as one likes. The other moves the positions out of the pulpit and into the secular public square. This is where the tipping point where separating church and state lies.

Churches violate that separation when, for example, religious members of school boards rewrite secular history books to conform to their religious vision. The same is true of many churches’ insistence the 10 Commandments be posted on every flat surface in America. Ditto for repealing health care, preventing gay marriage, and a host of other church-promoted secular issues.

As long as churches preach and don’t co-opt secular responsibilities there is separation.  To me this isn’t a separation issue, it’s the difference between a theocracy and a democracy.

Judson, I both support your freedom to belong to a religion or not belong to a religion or to agree or disagree with a church’s position. All I expect are the same liberties for those who disagree with you. All I expect from churches is to refrain from officially forcing their beliefs onto others.

My outrage isn’t selective, it’s quite consistent.

Which is more than I can say for yours.

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08/25/10

Can Jesus Discriminate?

Church Money

HOW MANY RELIEF WORKERS CAN DANCE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN? - World Vision wins its employment discrimination case, but the Muslims are still trying to get their community center built. As a society, we need to stop trying to find zero sum answers to difficult decisions on how to separate church and state.

Disclosure: The author is an Atheist.

There’s usually chirping when religion and hiring practices bump against each other and Monday’s Ninth Circuit decision in favor of Christian humanitarian organization World Vision is a case in point.

The 2-1 decision came from a suit contending that World Vision had discriminated by firing three employees who had been with them for 10 years and who didn’t, “believe in the divinity of Jesus or the doctrine of the Trinity.”

The court found that since World Vision is a religious organization, it can hire and fire because its employees directly work within the purview of its ministry and the bulk of its monies go to humanitarian aid, not proselytizing.

A Profound Sense of Religious Mission
In World View’s case, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote that, “World Vision has met its burden of showing that the ‘general picture’ of the organization is primarily religious.  World Vision is a nonprofit organization whose humanitarian relief efforts flow from a profound sense of religious mission.”

In other words, World Vision’s “religious” side and its “humanitarian relief” side are one and the same. Although why the three employees would join the organization knowing that and why the organization kept them around for 10 years before firing them is a bit of a mystery.

But then, what isn’t these days?

This case is fundamentally different from one a few years back in which Pat Robertson, and what was then known as his CBN University, ran afoul of discrimination laws.

CBNU operated a hotel that did not deny non-Christians guest rooms, but did hire and fire staff based on religious beliefs. They also had similar problems hiring and firing technicians and others working for what was then the Christian Broadcasting Network in non-religious jobs.

In their case, the court found that Robertson ran the hotel and TV network primarily to make money. Most of the money was used for investments in everything from South African diamond mines to stock, but some of it was used to support various religious and charitable pursuits. They lost the suit and eventually divested the hotel and university from Robertson’s personal empire.

Religious and employment discrimination is sometimes a tough thing. Minor differences between how money is collected and spent can have a profound impact on specific cases. It’s easy to take a one-size fits all approach and either say no discrimination or no paid staff. However, when these split hairs mean the freedom to practice religion, it’s a harder decision.

All too often, people on both sides – religious and Atheist – want to make religious freedom an all or nothing proposition. Those simplistic reactions do nothing to help either side of the argument and fuel an ever-growing schism between Americans.

Ersatz Hysteria
Today’s Park51 controversy is a great example. Some want Muslims stopped from building a community center (in fact, some even want them out of the country all together). Others see no reason to stop anything. Still others would be happy if all religions just went away, which I admit is sometimes a tempting, though hypothetical, thought.

All those joining the argument deserve to be heard and all of them have good points to make, but at the end, Park51 is a simple, local zoning case run amok. “Discussion” fell apart long ago and devolved into an ersatz hysteria on both sides.

Enough talking. Let’s just get on with things and stop dancing on the head of a theological pin. Ben Franklin said something about an entirely different topic, but that fits this subject in America today, “We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

Let’s get back to hanging together on something. This whining is giving me a headache.

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08/19/10

Sharron Angle’s Black Day at Tonopah

People of Nevada, I feel your pain. I get it. Really I do. It’s not like Harry Reid has been worth much as Senate leader and I’m sure he’s sucked just as bad as your personal Senator. But fer Chrissakes, couldn’t you come up with someone to run against him other than Sharron Angle? Someone respectable, you know smart and cultured – I’m thinking Rush Limbaugh.

Back in Black

BACK IN BLACK - Crusader for Merging of Church and State, Sharron Angle, once argued the color black was evil...however, not so evil as to avoid wearing it herself.

Angle is so spectacularly bad as a candidate and – well, let’s face it – quasi-sentient being that she actually makes The Grizzly Whisperer™ look like a genius. If you elect this woman to anything, much less the US Senate, your license plates will have to say, “Welcome to Nevada, the Moron State” as a matter of truth in advertising. And that’s saying something when you’re up against the competition from Texas and Arizona. I mean those people are real pros.

An Idiot That Keeps on Giving
Nary a day goes by that Over-Sharin’ Sharron doesn’t do or say something stupid. Reporters should only ask the questions she wants to hear and write stories that only she can approve. She thinks God called her to run for Senate, proving once again that God should hire a much better class of PR flaks for his domain. She doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state and accuses Democrats of being in violation of the First Amendment Commandment. Gadzooks Nevandans!

I’ve always believed that to be a success in life you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, but use a personal yardstick to compare yourself to what you are capable of.  Angle clearly has some sort of weird metric mojo going on when it comes to her personal yardstick.

Case in point : She denies it now, but back in 1992 she came out foursquare against the scourge of black. Not black as in African American (although she doesn’t seem like a BFF of them either). Not black as in Black Friday. Not even – to employ a Nevadaism – blackjack. No, Sharron Angle is against black…the color. Specifically, the color of football jerseys at Tonopah High.

It’s evil. It’s close to sacrilege she said of a move to change the school’s jerseys to red. So evil in fact that she agitated to have the change repealed, the jerseys seized and put under lock and key, and the kids who bought them left holding the bag because the school wouldn’t reimburse them.

I suppose we could infer from this that Sharron would lead the charge against all sorts of other “colorism” too.

The Amish Are Evil
Priests and ministers would have to exorcise their black vestments. Amish folks would have to wear hot pink (because we all know what raving, hell-raising devil-worshipers they are). Black Flag insecticide would be verboten and the Oakland Raiders banned from the football field – although some would think that an improvement.

I’m used to politicians saying and doing stupid things. It is what they do and you can expect a certain amount of that from the sheer volume of hogswallop they spew. Talk enough and you’re bound to look like a goob occasionally. It’s an occupational hazard. But I’m aghast to say she easily snatches the Scepter of Stupidity from Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Even the unholy Troika of  Trolldom, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and all the Fox News blondie bubbleheads rolled into one, run a distant second.

So people of Nevada, take mercy on the rest of us. Harry’s worthless, but at least he’s emasculate. Sharron is so stupid she might even figure out how to be dangerous – although I admit I may be giving her mental powers more credit than they deserve. Don’t elect this pinhead. We already have enough trouble as it is. Good God, Newt Gingrich might even make a comeback and that would be worse than a lifetime supply of Glenn Beck reruns!

Elect Sharron Angle and it will be a black day for us all.

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03/16/10

Why Does the Right Hate America?

During the reign of King George the Lesser, anyone not wearing a flag, waving a flag, wrapping themselves in a flag, pledging allegiance to a flag, or being out of direct sight of a flag was a traitor who hated America. No exceptions. No room for reasonable debate. Just, “why do you hate America?”

IRONIC NEO-HATERS - Former ultra-patriots have flip-flopped now that the electoral shoe is on the other foot. One man's question is another man's hating America.

IRONIC NEO-HATERS - Former ultra-patriots have flip-flopped now that the electoral shoe is on the other foot. One man's question is another man's hate.

Of course there were other reasons to be banished from the country of your birth. Question a civil right being trampled by bullies quaking in their boots over a second-rate videographer in a Pakistani cave and you were unpatriotic. Ask why a war was conducted in the most disgraceful and incompetent manner in history and you were allegedly out to personally shit in every soldier’s mess kit in the Middle East. There were a million reasons to be declared American non-grata, large and small, but you’d never know it by those same people’s words and actions today.

Rep. Steve King (R-Stupditstan) calls for an uprising against the American government. He calls it a Velvet Revolution ala the Czech uprising, but the end result – given his druthers – would be the same…a coup.

Capitulate to the Will of the American People
“Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can’t get in, they can’t get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people,” King said. Asked if this situation (health care reform) is like Czechoslovakia, King said, “Oh yeah, it is very, very close. It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there.”

It seems a bit odd that a US Congressman – a sworn representative of the American government, a man who loathes those who don’t recite the Pledge, and wears a flag lapel pin with OCD-like repetition – is calling for a “revolution” in America.

Why oh why, Rep. King, do you hate America enough to revolt?

Since their favorite missing idiot returned to his village, flag-waving Texans – including their governor – are talking succession. If you’re willing to tear your state off the US map, you must hate America with a special, religious fervor. And if you use the logic they used until a year and a half ago, it would be treason to refuse saluting the rebel flag of the Republic of Texas now.

Texans, why do you hate America?

Hot Bed of the Neo-Hate America Crowd
Texas is a special hot-bed of the Neo-Hate America crowd. The Texas Board of Education launched the second most damaging thing to come out of the Texas School Book Depository since 1963 – a revised history text that recognizes only conservative dogma, Christian religion, and grants Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln. They even erased some of Thomas Jefferson’s writings because he coined the term “separation between church and state” – by which, of course, they mean Christians only. Jews, Muslims, and and especially atheists need not apply.

Texas, you must really hate America to change its very history, but you are only the tip of the America-hating iceberg.

Tea Baggers from across the nation are joining the right-wing hate America movement too. They “stormed” the United States Capitol today set on running through the halls of Congress and clogging offices (well, the Democratic offices anyway). Couldn’t that be called an insurection?

Others who hate America include the Va. Attorney General, who believes his President is a Kenyan on an on again-off again basis. Sen. Lindsey Graham, considered by some to be a “moderate” America-hater, accused the Speaker of the House of liquoring up Democrats for a Kamikaze run at America.

Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning hates America so much he’s already seceded. He’s seen fit to obstruct the nation’s important business by representing Canada, and not America, from the floor of the US Senate.

During the Nixon administration, many of these same people called themselves the “Silent Majority”. However, they weren’t completely silent. They regularly offered advice to those who disagreed with them. “America, love it or leave it.”

I’d offer the same advice to them today, but I won’t because I love America.

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