A Pew Research Center survey has shown that, despite the faith-based politics of both Democratic and Republican leaders, most citizens like separation of church and state — including separation from politics. Two-thirds said that religious organizations should not endorse or openly support candidates. For a prior column on the issue, click here.
Since 1954, the IRS has imposed limits on the political activities of tax-exempt organizations, including churches and other religious institutions. Both parties have been actively organizing churches and church leaders.
Recently churches joined together to challenge this rule and openly support candidates from the pulpit.
What is astonishing is that our leaders continue to work hard to incorporate religious leaders and institutions into our political system while much of the world struggles with the instability and violence caused by such entanglement. We have largely avoided the unrest seen in other countries with our commitment to separation, but it continues to be under attack by members of both parties.
Source: PEW
Evangelicals act like the people condemning Jesus. Nothing good about that. They seek their own. Thinking themselves better than another is a strong point. Persecution begins. Pointing at a verse in an attempt to justify what they do.
Evangelicals act like the people condemning Jesus. Nothing good about that. They seek their own. Thinking themselves better than another is a strong point. Persecution begins. Pointing at a verse in an attempt to justify what they do
I once knew some very religious Christian people who actually believed that most of the problems in our society were caused by removing prayer from the public schools! Gently but firmly I pointed out that during the period of time when there WERE prayers (pater noster) in the public schools, there were crimes, murders, rapes, public corruption, riots, wars and the occasional “acts of god” that were not covered by insurance. One of them spoke while the others stared at me with a suspicious look on their faces (as in “what’s she trying to pull?”). She said, “But we were on our way to solving all that when they took our prayers away and now LOOK HOW BAD IT HAS GOTTEN ALL OVER AGAIN!”
So I shut up on that issue. God help us.
Prayer is a state of mind to be like Jesus is. How can that be kept out of anywhere except whoever not being not like Jesus is? Without constant prayer would oppress people, sacrificing in war killing people, and jailing them calling it good. Sounds like peoiple are not in constant prayer already acting like the sodomites outside Lots door.
Some of you folks would love to live in Madison, Wi., home of the Freedom From Religion organization. With all of the evangelicals I suppose their needs to be an idealogue counterbalance but Ann Laurie Gaylor is a whiney, prissy pain in the ass. A more congenial person would serve their cause better. But, I think she inherited the post from her mother.
Evangelicals act like the people condemning Jesus. Nothing good about that. They seek their own. Thinking themselves better than another is a strong point. Persiquton begins. Pointing at a verse in an attempt to justify what they do.
Darren Smith: >”Maybe I am just a bit cynical,…<"
Cynicisim by another name is rationalism.
“As I suggested in an earlier guest blog, the IRS should enforce the rule and pull the 501(3) (c) status.”
Yeah — why the Hell haven’t they? When I volunteered for a 501(c)(3) organization, we wanted to promote sales of a book that explained pretty much what our work was, and helped us reach folks who wouldn’t otherwise know anything about the situation we were organized to affect. Yet we were told we couldn’t promote the book because it was private enterprise, and that the most we could do would be to buy copies of it ourselves and then re-sell them, so we followed those guidelines. THAT was how specific and careful we had to be about not crossing the line from our nonprofit goals to some for-profit work. If there is a specific law saying (as we were aware, and of course we never even THOUGHT about violating) not to back candidates for public office, and there is a bold-faced deliberate violation, WTF and where are those enforcers from the IRS?
Hello Hello!
Or does the present administration fear being called religion-bashers if it happens on their watch?
You are most welcome, Elsie DL.
Again, a statement of personal dogma made from a point of legal and historical ignorance.
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.” – James Madison (you may have heard of him, the primary author of the Constitution)
“To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.” -Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Assn., 1802 (you may have heard of him, he wrote the Declaration of Independence)
U.S. Constitution, 1st Amendment – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”
The Separation of Church and State is the law and the law as intended by the Founders and established by the relevant case law.
Whether you like it or not is irrelevant to the fact it is a foundational principle of our form of government.
By the way, how’s that unusual stance you have on bestiality working out for you?
Gene H., thanks for answering artiewhitefox so strongly. The GOP has done a lot to make religious people in this country think that they are under threat. It is mostly baloney. Whenever and wherever I drive in the US, the churches and church-going folks don’t for a minute seem to suffer from religious freedom. I’ve mentioned before how far religious zealotry has invaded this country and its fighting men and women in the military. Mike Weinstein has been on the forefront of exposing the incredible push within the US military to impose its Christian doctrine on them, with the Air Force being very successful at it. The men and women of faith, or no faith, are continuously pressured to become part of the US Evangelical Military. Catholics, Jews, atheists and others are targeted and stand to lose out on promotions if they don’t adhere to the fundamentalist Christian doctrine. Find out more about all this by googling Mike Weinstein, himself a graduate of the US Air Force Academy who started the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He has suffered many threats and his house has been targeted by malicious acts. Try the following link: http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/.
“Two thirds are dead wrong.”
Actually, it would be you who is dead wrong. That the 1st Amendment established the Doctrine of Separation of Church and State is well established in case law, jurisprudence and supplemented by the writings of the Founders as to their intent to create a secular government. Any contention that religion has a place in American government – any religion – is simply factually wrong and a statement of personal dogma made from a position of legal and historical ignorance.
People are under a hypnotic lie to think Church,and state are separate. You are b believing words ignoring the spirit in them. Mark 14:1-9 KJV the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. John 12;10 the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; Look past the words of men to see the spirit .When you do that the words of men will be foolishness to you even as they are foolishness to God.
1 Corinthians 1:20 King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
Jesus needs to be in whoever. Don’t do the good works of him freeing people, drying tears, not giving life, and giving death in war, and Gods face will be death to the soul. Evil sees the Glorified face of God as Hell. Religion will lie constantly. Government is also void of Christ too. Both need Christ in them to be like a humble child.
Two thirds are dead wrong. Religion sought to arrest,and kill Jesus. Politics which is connected to the state seeks to arrest people, and kill them too. The Police will kill not considering their soul, and the military most definitely will kill. They in spirit are in, and of the same. Christianity is doing the works of Christ.not hiding behind a name. Islamic law is a step further down that path being even more abominable. State has may laws that try to condemn. Jesus faced many religious laws bent on condemning him. To think Politics, and religion by name is separate are allowing the beguiling devil to deceve them. Religious people influence laws in the state to oppress people even as Jesus was oppressed. Jesus is anti human laws that condemn. Oppression is one of the sins of Sodom,and Gomorrah Isaiah 1 verse 17. God pleading with them to not oppress the widow, and the fatherless, K, J, V.
As I suggested in an earlier guest blog, the IRS should enforce the rule and pull the 501(3) (c) status.
That’s not cynical, Darren.
That’s simply a realistic assessment of a system that attracts socio- and psychopaths by the nature of its financing mechanisms and appealing to their innate lust for power.
Politicians, too many of them, would sleep with any enemy or kiss anyone’s arse if it meant money or political advantage to them.
Maybe I am just a bit cynical, must be the Generation X in me.
Another Fake Holiday, Another Ceaseless Threat to the Things We Fought for This Country to Become
By Charles P. Pierce
10/7/12
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/conservative-commonwealth-13472810
Excerpt:
Apparently, this Sunday was something called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, in which various reactionary god-botherers engaged in an act of organized civil disobedience against a 58-year-old IRS regulation banning specific endorsements of specific candidates by ministers of any church otherwise claiming tax-exempt status. The whole thing was organized by a preposterous front operation on behalf of the wingnut god-enfeebled generally, organized to benefit the Republican Party specifically, and the presidential campaign of Willard Romney even more specifically. The front group is something called the Alliance Defending Freedom — and once again, in the Potemkin Village of the conservative grassroots, we are reminded of Bogart in The Maltese Falcon: the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter. The ADF is not shy at all about giving the game away:
When CNN asked to be put in touch with a church that plans to endorse the president, representatives from the organization said they don’t screen who the churches plan to endorse. The two pastors that the Alliance Defending Freedom put CNN in touch with plan to either criticize the president or endorse Romney.
The plan is simple. Break the law. Hope the IRS cracks down. Wail and rend your polyester about the heinous assault on your religious liberties for the time it takes for your case to work its way through the Supreme Court. And hope that, either because all the justices are now 100 years old, or because Romney has gotten elected, the Court is then populated entirely by simpletons waiting for Jesus to come with the car service to take them all to glory. Scoreboard!
(Yes, I know that “the heinous assault on your religious liberties” is completely bogus. Nobody has a First Amendment right to an automatic tax break. Nobody’s prevented from shilling from the pulpit now. You just don’t get the tax exemption if you do. Not that any of that will matter, as we know from the Roman Catholic Church’s ongoing effort to keep its Presbyterian janitors from obtaining certain ladyparts medicine, which is an assault on the Gospels that even Vespasian never thought of.)
Does that include removing religious symbols from Arlington, How about removing religious troops and just let the atheists fight wars. What you don’t see is this country was built on faith. The separation of church and state only means no state church
“What is astonishing is that our leaders continue to work hard to incorporate religious leaders and institutions into our political system while much of the world struggles with the instability and violence caused by such entanglement”
What churches offer politicians far beyond financial support are the votes of its congregants “en masse”. If you can deliver let’s say 75% of the votes of a given group of people in an area, then you have political power. If you have that kind of political power there will be politicians catering to you, despite their personal beliefs. The modern breed of Fundamentalist Religious Charlatans crave power as much as they crave money. That is how in Fundamentalist Christianity Jesus became a Republican Capitalist and champion of greed.
Reblogged this on Bienvenue sur le site de Ronan Erwan Loas.
Make that 2/3 plus 1……
The opinions of the public are irrelevant except for polls, even when they are good opinions like this one.
The opinion of the public against the endless wars and going in the wrong direction for example.