Who would support the following Amendment to the US Constitution?
“Baptism shall be defined as the total immersion of an adult in water, accomplished by a minister appointed by direct apostolic succession.”
OK, It’s a strawman. I know that. But I think it has a useful point to make about the issue of church and state, that many church supporters fail to understand. Because I know that no one who opposes the current proposed marriage amendment on constitutional grounds would find this one to be obviously undesirable. My real question it to the supporters of the Marriage amendment.
How is this one different? Why don’t you want the Government to have authority over one sacrament, but want to surrender authority to the government over another one? Or, do you? Perhaps the same contingent would support this Amendment.
Please explain to me why conservative Christians wish to appoint the Federal Government to be the authority over matters of their faith? Do you find George Bush to be an appropriate leader for your faith? How about Bill Clinton? John Kennedy? Grant?
I am astounded that preachers all over America are not stomping on the pulpits demanding that their parishioners defend the right of freedom of religion from this obvious attempt to sneak the nose of the federal camel into the tabernacle.
Of course I happen to believe that my faith in God is more important than the success of my political party. Perhaps that is less common a feeling than I had thought.
People have this nasty habbit of only speaking up when they disagree with something. To be fair, some Christian ministers HAVE spoken out against the proposal, but they are a small minority. Anyone truly into American-style republic fundamentals would be horribly opposed to tying religion to state, even if it goes against their beliefs. That is easier to say than do, though.
Point out, specifically and in detail, what legal rights and priviliges adhere specifically and uniquely to baptism. Otherwise, your argument is utterly worthless, even as an example.
While I don’t support the proposed marriage amendment, marriage in this country is a civil ceremony, and we’ve always had laws as to what constitutes a legal marriage. Baptism is not. So the two aren’t really comparable.
Again - marriage is a civil contract as well as religious one in this country. Baptism is only a religious ceremony. I suppose one could argue that marriage be considered only a religious ceremony and that no special treatment for married people allowed by the government.
Indeed, marriage, for better or for worse (pun intended) is not strictly a matter of faith. It’s a concept that’s been a judicial concept in just about every society. In the United States, there are certain rights (and consequences) that are inherent in marriage. As such, it is important that the concept be defined. OTOH, I (nor anyone else in the U.S.) face no legal benefits or consequences from my lack of baptism, as such there is no need for the government to define it.
Tris, I love you, but I’m annoyed by this assumption that marriage is the province of religion. I’m a stone atheist, and yet I’m married. If marriage were solely a religious sacrement why would I do such a thing? Yes, marriage has acquired religious trappings over the millenia, as have other major life events…birth, death, becoming an adult, etc.
When we look at the animal kingdom we find animals with many different social systems. Some animals have a harem system, with one male monopolizing a group of females, as in gorillas. Some animals are solitary, and only come together to mate, as in orangutans. Some live in mixed sex groups and mating takes place on an ad hoc basis, like chimpanzees. Some live in mated pairs, like gibbons. It just so happens that we humans have evolved in a similar way. We pair up and form long term social bonds. We call that marriage. The first priests and shamans didn’t invent marriage as a religious ritual, they noticed that people married and came up with religious rituals to celebrate that fact.
Marriage is a part of human nature. It is not a religious ritual, although religious rituals celebrate marriage. The analogy to baptism does not hold.
Got my vote.
Name the civil version “civil union” if you want, and make it accessible to everyone. Grandfather in all currently married people and make them also civilly unionized. Subsequent to this, though, marriage has no legal status and religious groups can do with it as they wish; whereas civil unionhood is open to folks with no discrimination on the basis of sexual pref or composition of the unionizing partners, and it, and not marriage, conveys the legal statuses and protections and etc.
Well, marriage is the province of many religions, from the point of view of the practitioners of those religions. That it also is a practice among those who do not practice religion is not really part of my point. I stipulate that it is an entirely valid civil point, though.
I really was hoping for some response from those who support the marriage amendment, especially those who do so for religious reasons. I see that I am not getting the involvement I had hoped for.
You see, I think that government will do harm to religion as much as religion does harm to government, and I really wish the politicalist Christians would understand that. But, it seems that winning the political influence is more important than being sure to serve only one master.
I’m sensitive to encroachment by government into areas where religion should hold full sway. The recent decision to force Catholic Charities to provide birth control in its health plan was unconscionable, in my view.
That being said, I don’t believe, as a Catholic, that the Catholic marriage rite in under any threat from without, especially since there is a civil ceremony that confers all legal benefits to married couples. The Catholic Church holds no monopoly here.
The Catholic Church routinely refuses to marry couples who don’t meet the requirements it sets forth. It’s safe to say that’ll continue even if same-sex unions are legalized. Other faiths, I’m sure, do the same thing.
That’s really a little confusing. There is not denying that in some religious faiths, marriage is a sacrament and the marriage ceremony is a religious ritual.
If George Bush has addressed only the civil issues of gay marriage, I wouldn’t be quite as outraged. I would still oppose him, certainly. And I would still support the right of everyone to marry the person she or he wishes to commit to. But the butthole had the nerve to bring relgious thought into his reasoning about why we need an amendment: to protect the sacred bond of marriage between a man and a woman. Yet the government certainly wouldn’t allow each church or religious faith to determine which marriages are appropriate and which are not. It has to be the religious right’s idea of what is “sacred.”