Comments | jrittenhouse: For Heaven’s sake:

jrittenhouse

For Heaven’s sake:

Nov 17, 2011 20:12

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Comments 6

kalimac November 18 2011, 01:40:40 UTC

My one-liner on the subject is: As long as there are pop quizzes, there will be prayer in schools.

The serious point being, as I'll go on to explain to anyone too dumb to get it, which most of them are, is that prayer is NOT banned in schools. Prayer is a private communion between a person and his or her God. What's banned is group classroom prayers, in particular those sponsored by official authority.

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Re: WTF jrittenhouse November 18 2011, 16:59:59 UTC

Hey, the parochial school kids around me back then were pretty tough!

orangemike November 18 2011, 02:21:18 UTC

My favorite examples of the way the Constitution is supposed to work, come from the early days of the Republic, when Congress had a LOT of members who had been part of the actual Constitutional Convention.

After the Bill of Rights passed, the provision of the old Northwest Ordinance that set aside one parcel of land to be sold to support whatever house of worship the settlers wanted was stricken from the new laws. James Madison said sternly, "How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of [the Continental] Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment."

The "Treaty of Peace and Friendship Between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary" declared bluntly
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion--as it has itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of ( ... )

kevin_standlee November 18 2011, 02:53:09 UTC

And I agree with you that most of these Christianists (not really Christians in my book) are convinced that their own particular sect will be the One In Charge. The slightly more devious ones are deliberately making common cause with other sects for now, but figure that eventually their One True Faith will be in charge and can force all of those other heretics to convert on pain of death to the One True Faith.

I fantasize sometimes that if there is an afterlife, these various Christianists would find themselves in their own private "Heaven" with the tiny handful of people who share their narrow "faith." It wouldn't take them very long to discover how boring and awful that would apt to be. Here's the exchange between one of them going to the entity that met them at the gate:

Christianist: "What sort of Heaven is this? There's only a few people here, and we're going crazy from boredom."

Gatekeeper: "What makes you think this is Heaven?"

kip_w November 18 2011, 03:19:27 UTC

Ah, but you see, if praying to the Christian God in unison had been permitted - sorry, mandated - before this, then the soon-to-be more numerous heathen religions wouldn't have been able to get a toehold. Now, all may be lost. Lost!

Oh, if only things had been different! If only God had been, I dunno, more powerful and less dependent upon people to bring His omnipotent will into effect. Heh.