Comments | jrittenhouse: Church and state:

jrittenhouse

Church and state:

Jun 23, 2009 12:10

If you want an idea of why the idea of mixing church and state is a bad one, look at Iran. You can’t challenge the state without challenging God’s word, you heathen. Die in hellfire!
And which church gets to call the shots? The largest church in the USA is the Catholic Church, and I can just bet that there’s a lot of people in the USA who aren’t ( Read more... )

iran, unity-church, islam, theocons, political_science, government, religion, usa, politics

Comments 5

stickmaker June 23 2009, 19:02:06 UTC

The problem is that humans are territorial, and that includes philosophical territory. Many will seize upon some concept (or leader) and defend that to the death against all challenges, including reason. Just look at how fanatical political supporters - of any stripe - get. Legally separate church and state? No problem; they'll just make their political party their church. Think about soccer violence in much of the world. The teams are literally worshiped, and any challenge - including losing a game - begets a holy war.

You can't depend on laws to separate the irrational from the rational. That's a product of society. And few societies in the world today are teaching their children objective reasoning.

kayshapero June 23 2009, 22:23:58 UTC

The Founding Fathers had plenty of horrible examples from the 16th cen to their present to look at at the time, and paid heed. Separating church and state was one of the wisest things they did.

mightyj June 24 2009, 01:38:58 UTC

While Catholicism may be the largest of the Christian sects on 23.9% of Americans are Catholic. 51.3% are Protestants with Baptists being the largest sect. (Numbers are from Wikipedia). I used to have a Catholic friend who believed that we should eliminate the separation of church and state because he wrongly believed that this is a Catholic country.

robin_june June 24 2009, 03:14:29 UTC

Ah, but not all Protestants will join cause with all the other Protestants, even to best the Catholics. (And I'm only talking about sects & denominations here, not Protestants as individuals.)

Some of those "Other Protestants" just ain't pure enough doctrinally, y'know?

Christian Theocracy in the US? Used to have one. Not anymore. dalecoz June 24 2009, 04:20:24 UTC

By today's standards the US was essentially a theocracy in large parts of the US outside of the big cities when I was a kid. From what a friend who recently moved to Arkansas tells me, some of that survives in the rural/small town south. Most places, religious political power--at least Christian political power is dwindling rather quickly ( ... )