Funks Challenge -3 of 3- Religion - ends Mar 20th

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

3- Religion - it's role/effects on society and government (up/downsides).

[Lalanae]

Upside - Gives some morons something to strive for other than a life of crime
Downside - Denny's is too crowded on Sunday when I just want to nurse a hangover and enjoy my Slim Slam

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

Upside - Gives some morons something to strive for other than a life of crime
Downside - Denny's is too crowded on Sunday when I just want to nurse a hangover and enjoy my Slim Slam

haha

[Nick]

I don't really have much to say about this. Im an atheist. I don't believe in God. If people want to believe in God that is fine.

However, religion and government should be kept seperate, this blurring of lines is simply unnacceptable. I'm fairly sure Funk agrees with me on this one.

[Spang]

Look busy, Jesus is coming!

[Warheart]

I'm going to go and pray to the invisible man in the sky for all the athiests.

[Funkmasterr]

Yeah I'm all about complete separation of church and state. I know that will never completely happen even though it should, however I am worried that recently people don't like the way things are going in the world in general and might turn to that type of voting and get someone like Huckabee into office, and that scares the shit out of me.

[Noysyrump]

I have a question. What do you all believe "Seperation of church and state" means?

When the constitution was writen, the Pope had a real bad habit of making Europe do what he wanted. Especially when it came to persecutions of rival sects of christianity.

What our boys wanted, was to dictate (to the world) we will have none of that here. Every single one of our founders was a religious man. They in no way meant "Freedom OF religion" to mean "Freedom FROM religion" wich seems to be the consensus now...


Now as an example, here in San Diego (Saint Diego!) we recently had a deal with some liberals wanting the cross on Mt. Soladad taken down because it was on "Public land" thus was in violation of the whole church n state thing. It was not in violation. No church owned it. Period. So there was no violation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Soledad

[Animale]

I'd take that down just because it's ugly as sin, notwithstanding the whole "separation of church/state" thing... I mean, it looks like it's made with cinder-blocks. Big ol' Jesus-killing cinder-blocks.

[Noysyrump]

I'd take that down just because it's ugly as sin, notwithstanding the whole "separation of church/state" thing... I mean, it looks like it's made with cinder-blocks. Big ol' Jesus-killing cinder-blocks.

And it looks like its got a big ole crack in it too.

[Noysyrump]

Ghey, link squished. The Christo Redentor in Rio de Janero.

I think we need one of these! Funded with democratic party contributions!

[Sueven]

It was not in violation. No church owned it. Period. So there was no violation.

This is stupidly wrong. I'm not going to run through the whole case, because it's very complicated, I don't know all the details, and I don't feel like figuring them out, but the bottom line is that a bunch of different court rulings have held that the cross is illegal. The reason it still stands is because the case is messy and hasn't been wrapped up yet, as the cross supporters are trying various tacks to let it stay.

If you had READ YOUR OWN WIKIPEDIA LINK (or, at least followed it to this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Sole ... ontroversy
wikipedia link) you could have learned this for yourself.

Also, whether or not a church owns an item with religious symbolism on public land has virtually nothing to do with the legality of that items presence. I don't know who told you otherwise, but I really hope it wasn't a lawyer.

Every single one of our founders was a religious man. They in no way meant "Freedom OF religion" to mean "Freedom FROM religion" wich seems to be the consensus now.

Interestingly, they never offered "freedom of religion" OR "freedom from religion." What the amendment actually says is that the government cannot act "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Your view-- which boils down to basically saying you can't preference one sect over another, but you can favor 'religion' generally-- is a minority view, but generally the same one held by Rehnquist and some others, based on basically the same historical information that you rely on. I prefer Justice Souter's view of the history:

Some have challenged this precedent by reading the Establishment Clause to permit "nonpreferential" state promotion of religion. The challengers argue that, as originally understood by the Framers, "[t]he Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion, nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion." Wallace, supra, at 106 (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting); see also R. Cord, Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction (1988). While a case has been made for this position, it is not so convincing as to warrant reconsideration of our settled law; indeed, I find in the history of the Clause's textual development a more powerful argument supporting the Court's jurisprudence following Everson.

When James Madison arrived at the First Congress with a series of proposals to amend the National Constitution, one of the provisions read that "[t]he civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed." 1 Annals of Cong. 434 (1789). Madison's language did not last long. It was sent to a Select Committee of the House, which, without explanation, changed it to read that "no religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed." Id., at 729. Thence the proposal went to the Committee of the Whole, which was, in turn, dissatisfied with the Select Committee's language and adopted an alternative proposed by Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire: "Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience." See id., at 731. Livermore's proposal would have forbidden laws having anything to do with religion, and was thus not only far broader than Madison's version, but broader even than the scope of the Establishment Clause as we now understand it. See, e.g., Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987) (upholding legislative exemption of religious groups from certain obligations under civil rights laws).

The House rewrote the amendment once more before sending it to the Senate, this time adopting, without recorded debate, language derived from a proposal by Fisher Ames of Massachusetts: "Congress shall make no law establishing Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed." 1 Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America 136 (Senate Journal) (L. de Pauw ed. 1972); see 1 Annals of Cong. 765 (1789). Perhaps, on further reflection, the Representatives had thought Livermore's proposal too expansive, or perhaps, as one historian has suggested, they had simply worried that his language would not "satisfy the demands of those who wanted something said specifically against establishments of religion." L. Levy, The Establishment Clause 81 (1986) (hereinafter Levy). We do not know; what we do know is that the House rejected the Select Committee's version, which arguably ensured only that "no religion" enjoyed an official preference over others, and deliberately chose instead a prohibition extending to laws establishing "religion" in general.

The sequence of the Senate's treatment of this House proposal, and the House's response to the Senate, confirm that the Framers meant the Establishment Clause's prohibition to encompass nonpreferential aid to religion. In September, 1789, the Senate considered a number of provisions that would have permitted such aid, and ultimately it adopted one of them. First, it briefly entertained this language: "Congress shall make no law establishing One Religious Sect or Society in preference to others, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed." See 1 Documentary History, supra, at 151 (Senate Journal); id., at 136. After rejecting two minor amendments to that proposal, see ibid., the Senate dropped it altogether and chose a provision identical to the House's proposal, but without the clause protecting the "rights of conscience," ibid. With no record of the Senate debates, we cannot know what prompted these changes, but the record does tell us that, six days later, the Senate went half circle and adopted its narrowest language yet: "Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion." Id., at 166. The Senate sent this proposal to the House, along with its versions of the other constitutional amendments proposed.

Though it accepted much of the Senate's work on the Bill of Rights, the House rejected the Senate's version of the Establishment Clause, and called for a joint conference committee, to which the Senate agreed. The House conferees ultimately won out, persuading the Senate to accept this as the final text of the Religion Clauses: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." What is remarkable is that, unlike the earliest House drafts or the final Senate proposal, the prevailing language is not limited to laws respecting an establishment of "a religion," "a national religion," "one religious sect," or specific "articles of faith." The Framers repeatedly considered and deliberately rejected such narrow language, and instead extended their prohibition to state support for "religion" in general.

Implicit in their choice is the distinction between preferential and nonpreferential establishments, which the weight of evidence suggests the Framers appreciated. See, e.g., Laycock, "Nonpreferential" Aid 902-906; Levy 91-119. But cf. T. Curry, The First Freedoms 208-222 (1986). Of particular note, the Framers were vividly familiar with efforts in the colonies and, later, the States to impose general, nondenominational assessments and other incidents of ostensibly ecumenical establishments. See generally Levy 1-62. The Virginia statute for religious freedom, written by Jefferson and sponsored by Madison, captured the separationist response to such measures. Condemning all establishments, however nonpreferentialist, the statute broadly guaranteed that "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever," including his own. Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1785), in 5 The Founders' Constitution 84, 85 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987). Forcing a citizen to support even his own church would, among other things, deny "the ministry those temporary rewards which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind." Id., at 84. In general, Madison later added, "religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." Letter from J. Madison to E. Livingston July (10, 1822), in 5 The Founders' Constitution, at 105, 106.

What we thus know of the Framers' experience underscores the observation of one prominent commentator that confining the Establishment Clause to a prohibition on preferential aid "requires a premise that the Framers were extraordinarily bad drafters - that they believed one thing, but adopted language that said something substantially different, and that they did so after repeatedly attending to the choice of language." Laycock, "Nonpreferential" Aid 882-883; see also County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573, 647 -648 (1989) (opinion of STEVENS, J.). We must presume, since there is no conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the Framers embraced the significance of their textual judgment. Thus, on balance, history neither contradicts nor warrants reconsideration of the settled principle that the Establishment Clause forbids support for religion in general no less than support for one religion or some.

While these considerations are, for me, sufficient to reject the nonpreferentialist position, one further concern animates my judgment. In many contexts, including this one, nonpreferentialism requires some distinction between "sectarian" religious practices and those that would be, by some measure, ecumenical enough to pass Establishment Clause muster. Simply by requiring the enquiry, nonpreferentialists invite the courts to engage in comparative theology. I can hardly imagine a subject less amenable to the competence of the federal judiciary, or more deliberately to be avoided where possible.

This case is nicely in point. Since the nonpreferentiality of a prayer must be judged by its text, JUSTICE BLACKMUN pertinently observes, ante, at 604, n. 5, that Rabbi Gutterman drew his exhortation "`[t]o do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly'" straight from the King James version of Micah, ch. 6, v. 8. At some undefinable point, the similarities between a state-sponsored prayer and the sacred text of a specific religion would so closely identify the former with the latter that even a nonpreferentialist would have to concede a breach of the Establishment Clause. And even if Micah's thought is sufficiently generic for most believers, it still embodies a straightforwardly theistic premise, and so does the rabbi's prayer. Many Americans who consider themselves religious are not theistic; some, like several of the Framers, are deists who would question Rabbi Gutterman's plea for divine advancement of the country's political and moral good. Thus, a nonpreferentialist who would condemn subjecting public school graduates to, say, the Anglican liturgy would still need to explain why the government's preference for theistic over nontheistic religion is constitutional.

Nor does it solve the problem to say that the State should promote a "diversity" of religious views; that position would necessarily compel the government and, inevitably, the courts to make wholly inappropriate judgments about the number of religions the State should sponsor and the relative frequency with which it should sponsor each. In fact, the prospect would be even worse than that. As Madison observed in criticizing religious presidential proclamations, the practice of sponsoring religious messages tends, over time, "to narrow the recommendation to the standard of the predominant sect." Madison's "Detached Memoranda," 3 Wm. & Mary Q. 534, 561 (E. Fleet ed. 1946) (hereinafter Madison's "Detached Memoranda"). We have not changed much since the days of Madison, and the judiciary should not willingly enter the political arena to battle the centripetal force leading from religious pluralism to official preference for the faith with the most votes.