This is Not America

[teir_garten]

Found this via a friend in the UK. It's a quote from Tony Blair on his speech to Barack Obama. In this particular portion of the speech, Blair was discussing his spiritual awakening and how it effected his presidency.

"I do not mean by this to blur the correct distinction between the realms of religious and political authority. In Britain we are

Comments

[teir_garten]

The United States, from its earliest days, adopted separation of church and state as a guiding principle, enshrined in the First Amendment. If the president mentions God in a speech once in a while, that's hardly going to spark sectarian violence in the streets.

A fair point, sure, but to me, (and I suspect to the civil servant in question) it's not about whether the president mentions God in his speech. It's the same argument against the phrase "One nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance - it's not the phrase itself, it's the larger issue of religion intervening in politics, which happens in America entirely too much to be considered the "leader of the free world" and for a nation which has the concept of complete separation of church and state is enshrined in the Constitution. There's no comparison to President Bush stopping stem-cell research, for example, because of religious protests, or the obnoxious amount of lobbying capabilities permitted by organizations such as the Salvation Army versus some British noble not being able to be called "earl of wherever" (a notion that's so archaic that even the Brits don't see much of a point in it.)

Again, the point illustrated the matter of religious bearing on government in Europe (Britain, in this case, but you could say the same about many other European nations, such as France or Germany - many of them except Italy, really) versus in the United States. And the fact that it happened in Britain - a nation with an ''official religion', illustrates it even more clearly.