Another Linkless Rant
Today I saw a bumper sticker that bugged me. No it didn't say "Hillary in 08" or anything like that. It said "When there was no seperation of church and state, people died for their religious beliefs."
Fair enough.
However, the last few times there was absolute seperation of Church and State a couple million people died in Pol Pot's killing fields, millions died in Mao's Cultural Revolution, millions died in Stalin's Gulags, millions died in Hitler's concentration camps etc. etc. etc.
Absolute seperation of a religion that values life from the government is every bit as dangerous as an absolute theocracy. The churches should not control the state, but can and should serve as a check on both the state's power and actions. It's a delicate balance that must be maintained and to maintained it should be understood. The church can and should serve as brake on out-of-control state. (The German Christians should have stood up to and publicly confronted Hitler - and many did; they are now true martyrs for the Christian faith.) We should prevent unjust wars (the current war is, in my opinion, a just war, as it is the aim of the Jihadists to create a worldwide caliphate and force Sharia on every nation on earth; they must be stopped). We should speak out against genocide, slavery and any intentional killing of innocents. We should speak out against changing the moral standards that have served us well for centuries. We should speak out equally against both corporate and union greed as there is no moral difference between them. 100% consistency and utopian perfection are humanly impossible, but we must the voice that says "Enough!" when things are getting totally out of hand.
Part of it is to treat all MORAL religions with courtesy, even if you believe they are wrong. (We Christians believe that God will judge the unbelievers and we are specifically told not punish them for their unbelief. This does not mean that we pretend that they are right; it means we don't kill them, steal from them, treat them as subhuman or destroy their "holy" places.)
But back to my main point; theocracy and absolute seperation of church and state are opposite but equal mistakes.
Fair enough.
However, the last few times there was absolute seperation of Church and State a couple million people died in Pol Pot's killing fields, millions died in Mao's Cultural Revolution, millions died in Stalin's Gulags, millions died in Hitler's concentration camps etc. etc. etc.
Absolute seperation of a religion that values life from the government is every bit as dangerous as an absolute theocracy. The churches should not control the state, but can and should serve as a check on both the state's power and actions. It's a delicate balance that must be maintained and to maintained it should be understood. The church can and should serve as brake on out-of-control state. (The German Christians should have stood up to and publicly confronted Hitler - and many did; they are now true martyrs for the Christian faith.) We should prevent unjust wars (the current war is, in my opinion, a just war, as it is the aim of the Jihadists to create a worldwide caliphate and force Sharia on every nation on earth; they must be stopped). We should speak out against genocide, slavery and any intentional killing of innocents. We should speak out against changing the moral standards that have served us well for centuries. We should speak out equally against both corporate and union greed as there is no moral difference between them. 100% consistency and utopian perfection are humanly impossible, but we must the voice that says "Enough!" when things are getting totally out of hand.
Part of it is to treat all MORAL religions with courtesy, even if you believe they are wrong. (We Christians believe that God will judge the unbelievers and we are specifically told not punish them for their unbelief. This does not mean that we pretend that they are right; it means we don't kill them, steal from them, treat them as subhuman or destroy their "holy" places.)
But back to my main point; theocracy and absolute seperation of church and state are opposite but equal mistakes.
posted by shoprat at 10:32 PM
2 Comments:
"The churches should not control the state, but can and should serve as a check on both the state's power and actions. It's a delicate balance that must be maintained and to maintained it should be understood." It's all about accountability. Also as far as treating all MORAL religions with courtsey...sure...and immoral with justice. We do have that responsibility whether we like it or not.
Excellent post. I get so tired of the phrase "Separation of Church and State" being taken out of context. Everyone understood what it meant until a liberal supreme court decided to redefine what it meant so they could attack the moral structures of our society.
The founding fathers wanted everyone to have the freedom to worship God anyway they wanted. They wanted God to be a part of everything just not a Government run State or Federal church.
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