OK People,
I know I’m really asking for it for bringing this up and saying what I’m about to say. But this subject has come up in a couple of recent threads and I felt it’s time I said something to clarify a situation a lot of people misunderstand.
The real intent in the US to supposedly separate church and state was really to separate the administration of church and state administration so that any one Christian sect did NOT control the others. At the time those things were put in they did NOT regard any other religion as a valid religions but only as pagan teachings.
The Christian church influence is so deeply buried in the administration and laws of the US that the majority of people do NOT even realise they’re there. they do not see them as being a church influence.
Here are a few basic example.
Marriage
The laws set out a monogamous marriage situation – yet plural marriages are allowed by many religions, more than those that insist on monogamy.
In fact if you study the Bible there is NO doctrinal support for monogamy at all. It was introduced at some point by the Pope when all Christians had to be Catholics as it helped him in controlling the world to insist on monogamy.
Sex
Sex between consenting people who aren’t married is another aspect of life introduced by the church and codified. Again, this isn’t supported by anything in the Bible but was introduced by early church leaders to help control the general population.
The Bible does speak against prostitution and being a w h o r e – one requires a payment for sex, ie selling sex, while the other requires extremely high promiscuity, multiple partners within a few days. Nothing about having sex with a regular lover without marriage. Oh, the Bible does speak against adultery which is a married person having sex outside of the approved marriage situation – but only the married person is at fault here, not an unmarried accomplice.
Homosexuality
Many past cultures allowed homosexuality without any problems, but most churches don’t. So we have laws against homosexuality.
…..
Laws against causing personal harm like assault, murder, theft etc existed before churches and are not church based. But many laws are based on the morality of the medieval Christian church teachings of that day and are so ingrained today that people do NOT see them as a church influence on the state, yet they are.
In the nineteenth century the US Congress persecuted the Mormons because they allowed the practice of plural marriage, as practised in the Bible and allowed by God, yet the state didn’t allow this because they were controlled by leaders who had been indoctrinated in a different law on marriage by their churches, so they persecuted the Mormons in contravention of all the laws of the land and the intents of the founding fathers of the US. That was NOT separation of church and state, but the wedding of the two.
In many cases Moslems who have more than one wife are only allowed to have their first wife legally recognised due to the Christian church based marriage laws in some states and countries. Again, no separation of church and state.
On the other side are the number of state bodies that do NOT permit people to exercise their person freedoms by banning all activities that may have a religious taint and claim they do it as separation of church and state. This is a case of forcing others not to show their own religious beliefs in case they disagree with the one in power.
It’s one thing to force a person to say prayers at school as that’s wrong, but totally different to force them to stop saying personal prayers when they don’t do it loud enough to annoy others. Schools stopping children from saying a quiet blessing over their lunch before eating are forcing state to control church, not separating the two. The same with refusing to allow them to mention personal beliefs in personal speeches.
Now, all of you, please think about this and feel free to add your own thoughts and feelings. But, please, let us keep this at a level of sane discussion and not fall into abuse because we have different points of view. No flame wars at all please.