Seperation of church and state?

[omej]

The christian right has a grip on the Republican Party. Under President Bush, faith based organized received large amounts of federal funding. Furthermore stem cell research has been crippled. Religion has no role in our government decisions and causes nothing but problems.

What do you think?

 

[mrregularman]

The christian right has a grip on the Republican Party. Under President Bush, faith based organized received large amounts of federal funding. Furthermore stem cell research has been crippled. Religion has no role in our government decisions and causes nothing but problems.

What do you think?

You are mostly correct. But these are the surface symptons of the situation. Each President in the past 20 or so years is directly responsible for appointing approximately 4800 federal appointments.

So you can imagine. Many of these appointments hire staff and run departments that are mostly out of view from the public, and the press ignores most of it unless something hits the fan.

These appointments are put in front of the President by supporters, donors, like minded thinkers.

Many of these positions (judges for example) outlast the term of the president.

The result is obvious, years after Bush is gone, the judges remain. People in the EPA and justice remain. Immigration, Labor, Defense, Economy, and on and on these people remain in positions. Even when the appointments retire or move on, those employed by the appointees can remain.

It is imperative that issues such as Church and State be critically examined by the press.

This is not a party issue. It is just as likely (though not probable) that a left wing fundamentalist President could stack the appointments to his/her thinking.

Congress is rubber stamping the new cabinet. This is the level where these practices have to stop. Congress was remiss throughout the Bush era in its oversight of Executive appointments. It is being remiss now in its appointments and oversight of the Obamma cabinet.

Our federal government is losing its checks and balances.

So, the Church and State issue, was absolutely out of control during Bush. But the whole thing is out of control in the bigger picture regardless of who the president is.

 

[Creativeelement]

I think church and state should stay seperated. Religion causes to much conflict and problems in most areas of the world and also causes problems in many different subjects.

 

[The Parakeet]

There should obviously be good separation. It benefits both sides really. The government shouldn't ever make a decision based solely on religious belief. The separation goes both ways too. Government should leave religion alone as long as it isn't hurting anyone.

I do think that Bush has made some religion based decisions that are bad overall. Stem Cell research and Foreign Policy on planned parenthood have definitely suffered as a result, this gets into a whole argument on religion = morality though...and that's another can of worms entirely.

 

[Firz]

I think it should either be a govt based solely on religious ideals or have nothing to do with religion at all. Examples are the Saudi and Russian govts respectively. Its when it is neither here not there that problems arise.

 

[The Parakeet]

I don't think that you could just separate them though. Like it or not, Religion is heavily set in the standard morality of the nation. It is really hard to say that one thing is solely religious. One's ethics and morals will naturally be a composite of their religion, philosophy, and experience. How would we separate that?

 

[Rick]

It's simple religion + politics don't mix it's sad and a shame but true. Due to this centuries morals and beliefs on what we now believe as acceptable and right has moved so far away from religious and spiritual beliefs.

Centuries ago government and politics mainly revolved around the church not saying these were better days as I don't think religion had the biggest impact on the change in society I believe technology did.

We only have to look at how politics began and a history of politics look at some of the ancient leaders of Rome all of there agendas revolved around religious ideas and there religious beliefs affected there choices which would affect there society.

In my opinion it's a shame we have moved on from those days as in todays society the ideas of what is right and wrong seem to be so messed up, it's rare now we see people come together helping one another making a difference now it's just every man/woman for themselves and everything seems to revolve around money.

Why does most crime happen? Poverty and money crimes of passion are a lot less than those who commit violent crimes to gain money.

:\ we seem to live in a very messed up world.

Rick

 

[pingpong12]

When the christian right has a grip on the republican party they are basically going against their own religion. Jesus Christ himself said to render onto ceasar what is ceasars and give to god what is rightfully his. Its also appalling at how many christians support preemptive strikes. Im catholic myself and i wont go on the major catholic forums because they have been brainwashed into this even though the official stance from the catholic church says NO to preemptive first strike.

 

[myp]

The separation of church and state is crucial to this nation and this funding only hurt the pillars of this nation, not to mention the financial burden. People need to realize once more than we are not a christian country or a jewish country or an agnostic country. We are a mixture of everything and we must learn to respect each others difference, and part of that respect comes with having a government that does not get involved in any of those religions.

 

[pingpong12]

The separation of church and state is crucial to this nation and this funding only hurt the pillars of this nation, not to mention the financial burden. People need to realize once more than we are not a christian country or a jewish country or an agnostic country. We are a mixture of everything and we must learn to respect each others difference, and part of that respect comes with having a government that does not get involved in any of those religions.

the only way we can have that Myp is to have a smaller government and since bush believes in big government and obama believes in huge government i think its safe to say its gonna be government as usual.

 

[myp]

the only way we can have that Myp is to have a smaller government and since bush believes in big government and obama believes in huge government i think its safe to say its gonna be government as usual.

I agree with you and it really is sad that the two major "options" aren't really too different. Hopefully Republicans will start to return to their roots in light of this past election, in which they obviously did poorly.

 

[pingpong12]

I agree with you and it really is sad that the two major "options" aren't really too different. Hopefully Republicans will start to return to their roots in light of this past election, in which they obviously did poorly.

I agree, and we need to remember historically that its been the republican party that has put an end to wars , not the democrats.

 

[samkenwick]

Church and state seperated, what a travesty of God

If church and church could get along fundamentally. That would be the first step to church as state connectivity. But since human nature is genetically primal and carnal by nature, and all of the bad things, that is never going to work out. However god is real, yes I have felt him make his presence felt. I can not agree with any mainstream religious genre of being, as god is all encompassing. That is my entire take on the matter, god is all things, and people must face the reality that god is just nature and nothing more. We make the decisions here, we decide who lives, who dies, and everything in between. Until that rules, we can not even put reality into perspective. Furthermore, I have never in my life met a person who is capable of doing that, putting into perspective the entire state of the planet earth and actually be capable or mapping a viable strategy to fix it. Church and state stay separated, otherwise we will be forced to believe some mass approved lie that benefits some and not all, and is an UNTRUE and UNFOUNDED basis of religious reality. I have never witnessed something used as a scapegoat to such an extreme degree as religion, and I would never like to see such a thing happen. My vote is we keep church and state completely separated. One has nothing to do with the other. Church is for praying, and love. State is for decisiveness and action. Oil and water mates.

 

[deanhills]

I don't think that you could just separate them though. Like it or not, Religion is heavily set in the standard morality of the nation. It is really hard to say that one thing is solely religious. One's ethics and morals will naturally be a composite of their religion, philosophy, and experience. How would we separate that?

This reflects my own position as well. Think this is also important with education at schools. In some societies in the United States, religion is very intense, and parents would like their children to have education that includes heavy religion, and of course with logical consequences in terms of conflict with those who differ on this. Once can't really separate religion completely, but there has to be a point of course where the objective of Government would be to govern and education to educate. For example with Obama who has strong religious beliefs, the majority of people feel happy and secure that this is a moral and good man of similar beliefs that they can identify with, but when he is in his office he should be focussed on practical Government rather than finding avenues to further his religious beliefs.

 

[GekiDan]

Church and state, in my opinion, needs to be seperated since there are intances that the state cannot do anything on Church's decisions. But there are Church's decisions that can easily influence the state's decisions.

Especially here in the Philippines. Church is different to the government/state.

Another added info:
I got this on my Values teacher. Church, with a capital letter "'C", is a community while church, with a small letter "c", is a structure.

 

[khassa]

well its not a easy task to separate them....i think to separate them to a level is possible but it would definitely work against in the favour of those who have permitted for them to separate....

 

[Glee]

I believe that politicians (being aware that most Americans claim to be Christian) use Christianity to try to get people to follow their policies. This is an idea that has worked for centuries. When we started America we wrote down as one of the rules that the Church and State should be separate... but we didn't write down that Christianity should be. Lets face it, the Nation was formed around these Christians and a number of our laws reflect Christianity ideals. The idea that Church is separate really stems from not allowing a Church organizations (like back in the old days when the Catholics ran everything) have a say in political matters. This was because back in the day the Catholic church would make governments do things (such as Crusades) that benefited them instead of the actual governments.

Now I think that businesses have replaced what the old Catholic church used to be. BUT that's just my view.

 

[deanhills]

I believe that politicians (being aware that most Americans claim to be Christian) use Christianity to try to get people to follow their policies. This is an idea that has worked for centuries. When we started America we wrote down as one of the rules that the Church and State should be separate... but we didn't write down that Christianity should be. Lets face it, the Nation was formed around these Christians and a number of our laws reflect Christianity ideals. The idea that Church is separate really stems from not allowing a Church organizations (like back in the old days when the Catholics ran everything) have a say in political matters. This was because back in the day the Catholic church would make governments do things (such as Crusades) that benefited them instead of the actual governments.

Now I think that businesses have replaced what the old Catholic church used to be. BUT that's just my view.

Would appear that the founding fathers were very focussed on separating state from church. Some of them were deists and not christian, although they obviously would not have announced this publicly as that would not have been a wise thing to do. But Benjamin Franklin had deist beliefs. If the majority of the population is Christian however, one would obviously expect that they would tend to vote for someone with Christian beliefs. Government leaders are obviously free to have religious beliefs, part that would not be so good if they use their office to advance their religious beliefs. That would be wrong of course.

 

[curious]

Separation of church and state should be absolute. I find our obsession with the religious beliefs of our leaders ridiculous. If we had any evidence that being religious produced more moral people. then it might be important. But as we have seen, the more people emphasize their faith, and the more they rant on specific sins, as the Repubicans tend to do, the more likely they are to be committing those sins as they rant. Newt Gingrich going on and on about Clinton's morals while he was cheating on his own wife, or Rush Limbaugh going on and on about drug addicts while he was addicted to painkillers.

America is for everybody, not just the Christian right, or Christians, or even just for religious people. I'd take 'in god we trust' off the money, and return the pledge of allegiance to it's original form (under god was added during the Eisenhower administration).

 

[deanhills]

the more people emphasize their faith, and the more they rant on specific sins, as the Repubicans tend to do, the more likely they are to be committing those sins as they rant.

Perhaps this is a bit of a sweeping statement. Perhaps it should have been qualified by Conservative Republicans or something to that effect, as there are as many differences among Republicans as there are among Democrats. Both have a very large percentage of Christians too, it being the majority faith in the US.

I'm totally in agreement with separation of church and state, but have to agree with Parakeet that you cannot totally divorce religion from people. As long as it does not interfere with their office one will have to accept that Christianity is part of the fabric of US society and hopefully people can be tolerant of one another's beliefs.