Zone1 Separation of Church and State?

[Donald H]

funny because that is what they relish most of all whether directly or using the congregational code they all live by ...

equal time for the politicians and atheists at the pulpit would resolve that issue with a healthy perspective and should be added to the 1st amendment.

or - as celibates fighting abortion rights to make everyone as miserable as they are has been working for centuries including their alternative horseplay as their example of religious freedom.

The stigma attached to needing to be a believer to serve in government, makes a mockery of your 1st. amendment.

Leave it the way it is or fix it. In truth, that's what your coming election is really all about.

Unfortunately, a solution will be avoided and perhaps the remedy will have to be found in your Second amendment.

 

[surada]

Jesus responds to Pontius Pilate about the nature of his kingdom: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.

But now (or 'as it is') my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:36); i.e., his religious teachings were separate from earthly political activity. This reflects a traditional division in Christian thought by which state and church have separate spheres of influence.

This can be interpreted either a Catholic, or Thomist, way (Gelasian doctrine) or a Protestant, or Lockean, way (separation of church and state).

 

[surada]

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ).[1]

 

[Foxfyre]

funny because that is what they relish most of all whether directly or using the congregational code they all live by ...

equal time for the politicians and atheists at the pulpit would resolve that issue with a healthy perspective and should be added to the 1st amendment.

or - as celibates fighting abortion rights to make everyone as miserable as they are has been working for centuries including their alternative horseplay as their example of religious freedom.

I'm sure you have no idea how ridiculous that sounds to a person who thinks critically and reasonably and that is sad.

 

[Donald H]

or - as celibates fighting abortion rights to make everyone as miserable as they are has been working for centuries including their alternative horseplay as their example of religious freedom.

The need for an abortion clashes with religion.
Sometime in the future in America the question will have to be settled in favour of science and medicine, in the courts.

Many Americans may feel the need to shoot their fellow Americans in the meantime, until America catches up to science.

Deaths and misery and mourning are 1st. amendment rights too.

 

[Donald H]

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ).[1]

Why would an American quote failure, in our modern world?

 

[Foxfyre]

Jesus responds to Pontius Pilate about the nature of his kingdom: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.

But now (or 'as it is') my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:36); i.e., his religious teachings were separate from earthly political activity. This reflects a traditional division in Christian thought by which state and church have separate spheres of influence.

This can be interpreted either a Catholic, or Thomist, way (Gelasian doctrine) or a Protestant, or Lockean, way (separation of church and state).

Responding to what I bolded of your post.

The only quarrel I would have is that there is no constitutional separation of church and state. They were seen as different things by the Founders but not mutually exclusive any more than Jesus saw God and Caesar as mutually exclusive. Jesus illustrated that one could be loyal to God and still pay the taxes that Caesar demanded.

The Founders intended that the Church not rule the people nor the State rule the people at the federal level, but both could peacefully co-exist and in doing so would benefit the people.

 

[Meriweather]

I agree. Which is why I am so encouraging people to stop with the silly insults and defamation tactics in politics and instead do the hard work of looking at what policies are beneficial and edifying for the people and what policies are the opposite. Of course Christians will be guided by their own sense of morality and what is beneficial and edifying.

As just one of many many examples, I can't imagine Christians or religious Jews seeing vulgar entertainment in parades or children's programs or sexually explicit material in young children's books as being okay. Any who do not speak out and push back and do what they can to eliminate that are not behaving as Christian in my opinion.

In my opinion, good laws would prohibit unacceptable things like that or at least allow a society to reject and eliminate it when the majority chooses to do so.

And I think people focused on the actual cause and effect of various government policy and action will speak out on that too and cast their vote accordingly in November.

There were a couple of school lessons I've never forgotten. One was the Milgram experiment which showed that a little over sixty percent of people would do things they normally wouldn't do when told that those in authority approved it or said it was alright. Another noted that a takeover of society/government began with the children, teaching/indoctrinating them against parental teachings and even parents. Both are examples of individual choice essentially being removed.

The lessons here is that if someone in authority tells us it is alright, then two-thirds majority are going to go along with what authority says. Get children away from their parents and a young age, and that mind will also be influenced by the other. What this does is diminish individual choice. I'm not saying all public schools go along with what is happening in California, but it highlights my case. All levels of students (A-F) are tossed into the same classroom where the curriculum is at C level (the level teachers are taught to teach). No Child Left Behind is in reality No Child May Move Ahead. And the F-students? Privately, they are known as "Flat-Liners" best ignored. Again, individual choice/preference being removed so that all are cookie cutter stamps of each other.

All personal choice is best left at the personal level. If Woman's Body=Woman's Choice, then the government has no need to say yes or no. If a "Woman's Choice" is good, then School Choice should be seen in the same light. Schools are essentially State Run, not locally run, where again Bureaucracy is very much in play. They make the rules about Tampons in Boys' Bathrooms, Transgender decisions being made without parent knowledge let alone permission.

The peoples' government (as I see it) is in the hands of bureaucrats not the people. How to fix it? Who knows for sure? I know I would favor term limits for all elected positions, and no lobbyists/lobbying. Corporations took over all the news media, so the media now being lobbyists themselves, let's see if we can get the media back into the private sector. Too late for any of this? Probably. However, I think the faithful laity have the best shot at suggesting some changes that favor the individual instead of the cookie-stamped.

 

[surada]

Why would an American quote failure, in our modern world?

Jesus?

 

[Foxfyre]

There were a couple of school lessons I've never forgotten. One was the Milgram experiment which showed that a little over sixty percent of people would do things they normally wouldn't do when told that those in authority approved it or said it was alright. Another noted that a takeover of society/government began with the children, teaching/indoctrinating them against parental teachings and even parents. Both are examples of individual choice essentially being removed.

The lessons here is that if someone in authority tells us it is alright, then two-thirds majority are going to go along with what authority says. Get children away from their parents and a young age, and that mind will also be influenced by the other. What this does is diminish individual choice. I'm not saying all public schools go along with what is happening in California, but it highlights my case. All levels of students (A-F) are tossed into the same classroom where the curriculum is at C level (the level teachers are taught to teach). No Child Left Behind is in reality No Child May Move Ahead. And the F-students? Privately, they are known as "Flat-Liners" best ignored. Again, individual choice/preference being removed so that all are cookie cutter stamps of each other.

All personal choice is best left at the personal level. If Woman's Body=Woman's Choice, then the government has no need to say yes or no. If a "Woman's Choice" is good, then School Choice should be seen in the same light. Schools are essentially State Run, not locally run, where again Bureaucracy is very much in play. They make the rules about Tampons in Boys' Bathrooms, Transgender decisions being made without parent knowledge let alone permission.

The peoples' government (as I see it) is in the hands of bureaucrats not the people. How to fix it? Who knows for sure? I know I would favor term limits for all elected positions, and no lobbyists/lobbying. Corporations took over all the news media, so the media now being lobbyists themselves, let's see if we can get the media back into the private sector. Too late for any of this? Probably. However, I think the faithful laity have the best shot at suggesting some changes that favor the individual instead of the cookie-stamped.

Citizens whether clergy or laity or whatever role they play in society are the only ones who can change bad government. And it can get to the point where it is extremely costly even to the point of being a life or death situation to try. In my opinion we are perilously close to that now.

The problem is that those who see liberty as an unalienable right of humankind are far more likely to see liberty as a choice to believe what is right along with an equal choice to believe what is wrong. They reject any cookie cutter concept and therefore are less likely to attempt to impose their will on others. And they live a mostly live and let live life and only a few take the risks to try to change anything or stop harmful changes demanded.

The neo-Marxist WANTS a cookie cutter society in which all much think, believe, speak, do the same. As Kamala Harris puts it, equality is everybody arriving at the same point even if they begin without equity. It is another way of saying to each according to their needs from each according to their means so that all become the same cookie at the end.

And as they gain majorities in those entities and make it any who think differently from them uncomfortable and/or unwelcome, they have been more fanatical, fixed, extreme and radical in their views.

Right now the neo-Marxists control most of the government, education, media, entertainment, big business, scientific institutions, much of religion because for the last 50 years they have patiently been infiltrating and taking power over those entities that control the message and influence the mind.

They are already trying to take the children emotionally and philosophically away from the parent. The efforts to weaken and eventually dismantle the traditional nuclear family is paying off for them. They haven't accomplished the whole goal, but they're working on it so they have complete control over indoctrination of the children.

Is it too late? I don't know. I will go to my grave doing as much as I can to enlighten minds being poisoned by Marxist ideology though, and to educate fellow citizens in what is happening and encourage them to remedy that as much as possible at the polls in November.

 

[Donald H]

Right now the neo-Marxists control most of the government, education, media, entertainment, big business, scientific institutions, much of religion because for the last 50 years they have patiently been infiltrating and taking power over those entities that control the message and influence the mind.

It's more than 50 years, it's more like 200 years but it started slowly and sped up more noticably in the last 50. Darwin published in 1859 and modern science became reality.

There was no possibility of religious beliefs surviving indefinitely after that!

Before those two events there was no separation of church and state, and no need for it. The church and the state had nothing on which to disagree!

The conservative right in America want to take it all back to 1858 and pretend that Darwin never existed, and much less published.

Some, even in 2024 still maintain that Darwin got everything wrong!

Meriweather and Ding are two such culprits who can't denounce their bibles' outdated nonsense.

They will try to find a few Marxists with whom to try to start a war, to finally ensure that their 1st. amendment doesn't apply to atheists and other disbelievers.

 

[BreezeWood]

The Founders intended that the Church not rule the people nor the State rule the people ...

more absurdity from the desert adherent -

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America ...

no where in the u s constitution, american government is there a notice of authority for any religious belief.

 

[alang1216]

The Constitution prohibits the hierarchy of Churches/Religions from being involved in State/Federal government. Popes, bishops, priests, ministers are set apart from government. However, this separation does not apply to the laity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the vocation of the laity:

898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will....

899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church….

People/citizens of faith are not only citizens of a nation, but are also citizens of the Kingdom of God. It is not only our right, but our duty to permeate the social, political, and economic realities within our governments.

All individuals have the right to have their voices heard, I doubt anyone would disagree with that. What I have a problem with is when a church makes the claim that they speak for God. I think that blurs the line between moral guidance and coercion. How can any believer take a position in opposition to God?

 

[Foxfyre]

It's more than 50 years, it's more like 200 years but it started slowly and sped up more noticably in the last 50. Darwin published in 1859 and modern science became reality.

There was no possibility of religious beliefs surviving indefinitely after that!

Before those two events there was no separation of church and state, and no need for it. The church and the state had nothing on which to disagree!

The conservative right in America want to take it all back to 1858 and pretend that Darwin never existed, and much less published.

Some, even in 2024 still maintain that Darwin got everything wrong!

Meriweather and Ding are two such culprits who can't denounce their bibles' outdated nonsense.

They will try to find a few Marxists with whom to try to start a war, to finally ensure that their 1st. amendment doesn't apply to atheists and other disbelievers.

This has little or nothing to do with Darwin or any other scientific or religious beliefs. The non religious were among us in the 18th, 19th, 20th centuries just as they are among us now. What almost all Americans were agreed upon up until the mid to late 1960's was that the government of, by and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The infiltration of the counter culture driven by neoMarxism, however, doesn't give a rat's ass about science or religious faith. It craves absolute power for its own purposes that have little or nothing to do with anything other than that desire for power and whatever advantages it can provide for those who have it.

 

[Foxfyre]

more absurdity from the desert adherent -



no where in the u s constitution, american government is there a notice of authority for any religious belief.

You find it in the First Amendment. But it requires knowledge of history, intent, reading comprehension for some to understand that.

 

[ding]

The Constitution prohibits the hierarchy of Churches/Religions from being involved in State/Federal government.

That's not exactly correct. The establishment clause was written to prevent the federal government from interfering with state established religions. Of which half of the states had at the time the constitution was ratified. In other words, the establishment clause prevented the federal government from establishing a national religion.

Later... the 14th amendment was used (incorrectly I might add) to apply all restrictions in the bill of rights to state governments including the 2nd amendment. The way the founders wrote the bill of rights, if state governments wanted to ban firearms it would have been perfectly legal. But not after the 14th was incorrectly applied. So a little bit of irony there.

Does the Bill of Rights apply to the states?

Does the Bill of Rights apply to the states? Originally, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. (One of the amendments that the U.

www.britannica.com

Religion in the Original 13 Colonies | Under God | ProCon.org

By the year 1702 all 13 American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. This support varied from tax benefits to religious requirements for voting or serving in the legislature. Below are excerpts from colonial era founding documents citing these religious references. Most instances...

undergod.procon.org

The 14th Amendment and the Bill of Rights | Tenth Amendment Center

Did Congress or the ratifying States intend to incorporate, in whole or in part, the Bill of Rights

tenthamendmentcenter.com

 

[ding]

All individuals have the right to have their voices heard

That's not exactly correct. Government can't forbid reasonable free speech. But everyone else can.

 

[ding]

The need for an abortion clashes with religion.
Sometime in the future in America the question will have to be settled in favour of science and medicine, in the courts.

Many Americans may feel the need to shoot their fellow Americans in the meantime, until America catches up to science.

Deaths and misery and mourning are 1st. amendment rights too.

Abortion is a human rights issue, not a religious issue.

 

[Meriweather]

All individuals have the right to have their voices heard, I doubt anyone would disagree with that. What I have a problem with is when a church makes the claim that they speak for God. I think that blurs the line between moral guidance and coercion.

What do you mean, exactly, by, "Speaks for God"? For example, people of the Mormon Church claim they speak for God in announcing the Catholic Church is in apostasy. Those who say they "speak for God" when they say vote for a particular candidate. Neither "speaks for God".

On the other hand, there are those who proclaim God's word--i.e., that sins are forgiven or that Jews were Chosen--i.e., set apart for a specific purpose. The Ten Commandments may be another example.

How can any believer take a position in opposition to God?

And here we get to the crux of the matter--and this reaches beyond religion/faith. Instead of opposition to "God", we can substitute any number of words here. Opposition to the government, to the Democratic Party, to the Republican Party, to Science to name just a few.

Any/all of those positions should be based on fact and logic, not on feelings, or the say-so of anyone, no matter how highly placed. First, go to the source. Who actually said it and what was the motivation behind it. If one supports the statement, what is the logic, facts for supporting it? Did God actually say to vote for a certain person? If he did not, then who said God said this, and what was the motivation for that statement?

I can point to any number of reasons I may not be in favor of Kamala Harris for President, much of it based on what is seen in the media and the positions she takes on various issues. However, I would not say anything against her personally for the sole reason I know for a fact when she was Senator she was kind and professional towards my daughter. She is not just a name to me, and nor should any candidate be to any of us.

 

[BreezeWood]

You find it in the First Amendment. But it requires knowledge of history, intent, reading comprehension for some to understand that.

no -

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America ...

its found in the preamble of the american constitution, the jurisdiction for all its citizenry.