Separation of Church and State is and always has been a lie—a dangerous falsehood weaponized to dismantle our Republic. From its very inception, this phrase was twisted to marginalize Christian values and strip away the moral foundation that has held America together. They want you to believe that faith and patriotism are separate—that you must choose between God and country. That is unacceptable. Don’t fall for it.
We are a Judeo-Christian nation. Our Founders did not intend to erect a secular barrier between God and government—they understood that faith and freedom are inseparable. We must reclaim that truth and not let secular agendas undermine what it means to be American.
He's lying. And he's lying in a particularly bad-faith manner: there has never been a need to choose between one's deity and one's country, not in the United States -- and the secular barrier between religion and government exists precisely so that none of us ever has to.
The Founders represented a very wide cross-section of religious beliefs and attitudes, from Ethan Allen's aggressive Deism and Thomas Paine's agnosticism, to devout Congregationalist Samuel Adams (who broke with cousin John Adams, at least for a time, over the latter's conversion to Unitarianism). All of them had some experience with a state church, and they didn't want it. Their consensus appears to have been that religious belief and practice was a deeply personal matter, which should not be compelled -- or restricted! -- by government. They had no problem with individuals looking to their faith for moral guidance, but they wanted government kept firmly out of it. And as early as 1765, James Madison expressed the thought that a state-established religion was detrimental not only to freedom of religion but also encouraged excessive deference to any authority that might be asserted by an established church. Thomas Jefferson, in the 1779 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom wrote:
[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Your religion is your religion, which you share with the fellow members of that faith; our government is our government, a secular matter. If your faith guides your political choices, that's fine; if your faith compels the political choices of others, or restricts the free expression of their faith, that's wrong. The United States of America is not a "Judeo-Christian nation," it's a nation with strong protection of religious freedom -- and a government open to men and women of all beliefs.
Indiana's Lieutenant governor is peddling disingenuous, deceptive crap. He's shoving men like Paine and Jefferson out of history in favor of nonsensical fairytales about the Founders, in a transparent attempt to justify theocracy.
3 comments:
You are exactly right about seperation of church and state and religious freedom was one of the main reasons why lots of folks came to America. I live in a nice town in Texas that was established by Germans in the 1800's and they had a law that no churches could be built in the town. Our Methodist church is 150 years old this year and in the 1800's it was on the other side of the the river not far from the Catholic Church and when churches were allowed in the city limits the church was moved across the river to its current location. The original settlers of our town had enough of that state church stuff and royalty in Germany and that was a good reason for them to come to the USA. They also wanted no part in the Confederate stuff during the Civil War like the other German communities in this part of Texas and had to hide some of their young men to keep them from being drafted into the Army of the South.
The folks who crafted the Constitution were well aware that Puritans had hung Quakers for being the wrong kind of Christian. Separation of church and state wasn’t about denying Christians — it was at least partly to protect them from each other.
The inevitable end of a State Church is to become the State's church. As such, it is owned by the State, teaches what the State wants it to teach, and ignores what the State wants it to ignore.
It's super sad to see erstwhile small government Republicans selling out all their principles for a mess of MAGA pottage; and those who pretended to loudly love the Constitution dump it for the illusion of power.
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