Separation of church and state

One of the biggest issues that me and my conservative "friends" wrestle with is separation of church and state. This has become especially heated with the institution of Bush's "Faith based" programs.

My contention is always that a separation is required to preserve religious freedom.

Their claim is that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian beliefs.

One of the best tools for battling this lunacy is an awesome compendium of quotes and quotations from Americas origins dealing with this issue. This piece was created by Ed and Michael Buckner.

Ed Buckner is a professional researcher who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. An active state-church separation activist, he and his son, Michael, have compiled this list over the past couple of years. Originally, this was a pet project designed to help Ed counter fundamentalist editorials. However, it has grown to be published and offered for sale at various Freethought and Civil Libertarian events. Ed has a column in "Freethought Today", called "In Others' Words" in which he uses "cryptoquotes" to present these quotes. He offers the hard copy of this compendium for sale in "Freethought Today" for $9.00.


The content of this compendium is being posted to my website for your reference. I suggest you read it and use it to pummel the Theo-cons into a bloody pulp.


have fun.


http://www.slantleft.com

:evilfrown: O8) :evilfrown: O8) :evilfrown: O8) :evilfrown: O8)

For example,

http://www.creationists.org/churchandstate.html

he made them up out of whole cloth.

A former professor of mine and a former Baptist minister.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573122874/qid=1082747398/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-8293923-4847129?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

You said "My contention is always that a separation is required to preserve religious freedom."

That's the meat of it. Your friends feel comfortable with the government endorsing their religion now because they feel they are in the majority. But what if the government endorses a different version of Christianity? Then they would be crying persecution. This is why the Baptists were originally very pro- separation. As a (then) small minority denomination they wanted to make sure they had the same rights as Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

If any are so inclined to do some serious reading on the subject of religious freedoms and what the founding fathers thought I would highly recommend the site posted below.

I would expect more of the democrats to read this than the others. I have found that my repuglican friends do not want to do any study and research, just quote from the Book of B*.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/archives/

..thanks so much for posting this information... It is invaluable IMO!
:hi:

sorry for the delay

and that would still not make this a Christian Nation. Their ideas were specifically secular. It was the seperation of dogmatic authority and We the People that made this nation a first of its kind.

Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/liberalchristians.htm

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion...

That's kind of hard to get around.

One of the tactics that the Religious Right seems to delight in is reiteration of false ideas. Let me present an example.

I used to debate the atheist/theist issue in the past. The vocal arm of the fundimentalist movement would typically be our opposition. When the argument came to evolution they would truck out a particular old argument. Namely the 2nd law of Thermo Dynamics. Entropy.

Their argument was that the 2nd law stated that systems tended towards chaos, not order. Thus life could not have arisen here on earth because that constitutes an increase in order. We would explain to them that the 2nd law applies to closed systems. The Earth has a constant bombardment of new energy entering its system from the sun. So their argument was dismantled.

But if you waited a bit, and got a new audience together, they would trot this same argument out again. Despite knowing it is flawed. The hope was that there would not be anyone in the next debate that knew how to dismantle this seeming appeal to science.

The organizers and leaders behind the religious right are not interested in truth. Their only concern seems to be dismantling anything that would stop their progress. By any means and any tactic. Thus one of their tactics is repeating the big lie. Over and over and over again. They keep repeating it and it is not always countered with the truth. Whenever it is not countered it finds furtile soil in which to spread its poison.

This same tactic is used in their polictical strategy. They attempt to weaken the strong central government and attempt to take over local districts with a continual barrage of stealth candidates and motions. Its the same approach WalMart uses to take over a territory. Which makes sense because big business and big religion have found a common enemy in strong secular government and thus share tactics to dismantle their enemy. And that enemy would be We The People.

This was the first Treaty America entered into. It is the Supreme Law of the Land

Freedom of religion is the very first thing they mention. I don't think it can get much more critical than that. But our Religious Right friends do not care about facts. They will continue to inundate the people with their own spin and reinterpretation. They will lie. They will bully. They want their theocracy and they will do whatever it takes to get it.

Many would try to make that into something it is not and it is not freedom FROM religion.

I wasn't aware of this one. I can't wait to show this one tomy wingnut relatives, they will freak right the hell out.

visit this site. An exhaustive exploration of writings and quotations from the founding parents: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html

to the government and liberty of a free people.

There is no difference with the present day religious fanatics which believes that the bible is the only means by which a country should be governed and ruled. That is what is happening right now---in many, many areas. They purposely ignore the rights of individuals to liberty and pursuit of their happiness.

It's time to call it like it is. A religious minority which is attempting to undermine not only the constitution, but the rights of those who don't believe as they do is ignoble. Puritans are in no way noble.. they are no better than the Taliban...

Our modern Puritans have learned how to use Post Modern Rhetoric against itself. They have been able to recast themself as the victims. Thus making their cries for intolerance into defending their beliefs.

"The Christian Coalition is certain to make 1992 much more interesting and disturbing than the conventional wisdom is ready to believe. Believe." So investigative journalist Frederick Clarkson warned us after attending one of the first Christian Coalition "Road to Victory" gatherings in 1991. Clarkson was part of a group of journalists who documented those early years when the Christian Coalition took "working control" of the Republican Party.

Clarkson was talking about the 1992 elections. Just two years later, the Christian Coalition gave the Republican Party majorities in both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years. Four years after that, a sitting President was impeached for a sexual indiscretion. Is the conventional wisdom ready to believe that the Religious Right could gain control over all three branches of the federal government? Is it conceivable that the United States could become a fundamentalist Christian theocracy or what the Orlando New Times calls The United States of Jesus?

**

*

*

They are the seven highest ranking Republican Senators in the U.S. Senate.

Every one of them received a scorecard of 100% from Christian Coalition.

That means they voted with Christian Coalition 100% of the time.

How were people representing such an extreme ideological point of view elected to the top positions in the Republican Party?

The leaders of the Republican Party were chosen by their colleagues.

http://www.theocracywatch.org