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Out of Their Medieval Minds!

The phrase, "a wall of separation between church and state" does not appear in the Constitution.  What is in the First Amendment to the Constitution is a crystal clear declaration that the government may not establish a religion, nor prohibit people from being religious if they want to.  To establish a religion is to make some particular religious group the official religion of the country.  It is to establish a theocracy; a religiously defined state.  That, the Founders said, may not happen.  But if you want to be religious, go ahead!


We are not a Christian nation.
We are not a Jewish nation.
We certainly are not a Muslim nation,
or a giant coven of witches and warlocks.
We aren't Protestant, or Catholic.


The Founders had had enough of the religious wars in Europe.
Huge numbers of the immigrants to this "New World" came here
precisely because they had been persecuted by the Catholic
or the Protestant nations they had come from.  In effect they said,
"Be religious if you want to, but government is not in that business!"
Government is to guarantee certain inalienable rights, and that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


The fact is that some of those persecuted minorities from Europe
came here with the high hope and fervent faith that they 
could become the persecuting majority.  They tried.  It didn't happen.


So go be Mormon if you want to!  Be Episcopalian if you want to,
or Catholic, or Baptist, or Quaker or Lutheran or Presbyterian
or Unitarian or Deist, or nothing at all, if that pleases you!


Maybe that is a bad idea.  Maybe you would prefer this to be
a Mormon nation, or a Southern Baptist nation, or if, someday,
they become a majority, a Roman Catholic nation.  Wouldn't 
that be fun?  Should baptism be required for citizenship?
How many wives or husbands, at a time, would be optimal
for the pursuit of happiness?  Birth control?  Prohibition of alcohol?


The people who want this to be a religious nation--officially
a religious nation--need to ask first whose religion they are talking about.
Is it just a matter of whatever the majority denomination is?


Consider the Archbishop of St. Paul.  He is doing his damnedest
to impose his morals about sex and procreation on everyone!
What do you suppose school science books would be like 
if our official religion was, not Catholic, but fundamentalist Protestant!


This is not a religious government, even if, 
as more clearly used to be the case, most people are religious.  
Government does not exist, here, to promote Christianity,
or Judaism, or Buddhism.  Government, here, 
is constitutionally prohibited from promoting religion, of any kind.
And no religious group may assume its moral preferences
are necessarily identical to those of the nation.  


The tea drinkers who want to recreate a holy land here
are out of their medieval minds!  

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