With Der Trihs? Yes, please! Put it on Pay Per View and we’ll make a fortune!
Along the lines of another thread talking about inalienable rights, we grant our government enormous powerm in exchange for certain benfits, on the condition that the government should not interfere with certain rights (life, liberty, happiness).
One of the things we are free to do is to worship (or not worship) as we choose.
If religion gets into government or vice-versa, that right is infringed or at least on its way to infringement–and there are many historic examples, some quite fresh in the minds of the founders of this country.
All the Americans in this thread arguing for separation of Church and state should explain why religion plays such a small role in public(and private) life in most of Europe, where church and state are not formally separated, while in the US, where they are separate, all politicians(and most private citizens, if the reports of hatred of atheists are true) must pay obeisance to God and to religion.
While we can observe that Europe is more secular while also having states with formal religious ties and America is less secular while having formal separation of church and state, I don’t think we can draw from this that a state church necessarily secularises a country, or formal separation radicalises churches.
Each country has different experiences. I think the main difference is Europe long ago had religious oppression and massive religious wars, which tends to put people off religion, while America had a lot of faiths but huge, empty space in which they could move and isolate themselves and essentially be a cohesive religious community while still technically observing religious freedom. Now the US is more crowded than it used to be and is these once-isolated religious communities are rubbing up against each other and finding that religious liberty means accepting differing views, too.
JFK said it better in 1960 than I ever could: Transcript: JFK's Speech on His Religion : NPR
If I understand this correctly, then yes. Because of the fervency of our religious majority throughout much of our history, we’ve had to codify a strict separation. Even at that, the majority religion practitioners have had a fairly cozy relationship with those in political power and there is continued resentment that said coziness is dissipating somewhat.
Still, I long for the day when a major political candidate makes no statement of religious faith whatsoever and, even more importantly, no one from the media or electorate asks him about it. Then I’ll think we’ve progressed.
Centuries of slaughter and tyranny. With no separation of church and state, religion was free to be open about its nature, instead of putting on a civilized mask. It was free to take control of the state, and to use that power to kill all who opposed it, to spread terror and impose its dogma by force.
In America, Christianity could generally go only so far before being crushed by the state; the government generally wasn’t going to let one town mass murder another because it was Catholic or Protestant. In America the monster has had to wear a mask, to pretend to be civilized and benevolent towards Christians at least.
Or Saturdays, or any day.
The only issue with separation of Church and State is when the government assumes that they should therefore treat secular opinion (usually scientific opinion) and religious opinion as though they were equally valid.
I’d say for the same reason it’s a good idea to have laws against prejudice: to avoid the tyranny of the majority. Many don’t quite believe it is working.
It’s just a constant throughout history that, no matter how virtuous a member of a religion is supposed to be, there will be enough unvirtuous people who will use said religion to oppress people. Yeah, I can think of a mythical Christian society that adheres to what I consider to be Christianity and thus treats everyone well even if they disagree, but, barring some supernatural segregation that can weed out the bad people, that’s never going to happen.
A thousand years ago Imam al-Ghazali declared that mathematics was evil. Since the government at the time was Islamic, his words carried the weight of law. This brought about the collapse of scientific advancement in the Islamic world.
The current push by creationists is another example of why church and state should be separate. They want religious dogma taught as scientific fact, and are trying to force it to be taught rather than actually promoting it on it’s scientific merits. If this was a Christian theocracy, there would be no debate, it would be law. Children would be taught these, and most likely other things, as fact.