A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News Nov. 22, 2017 https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-talking-turkey-about-religious-freedom/
Update: Dec. 5, 6, 16 2017: Supreme Court to hear the Masterpiece Cakeshop case:
http://www.newsweek.com/masterpiece-cakeshop-v-colorado-civil-rights-commission-three-things-know-730892
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-weighs-bakers-refusal-cake-gay-couple-060222755.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-trump-rules-birth-control-204222704.html
Hopefully not forgotten when we feast Thanksgiving is the reason the Pilgrims risked the dangerous passage across the ocean . It was to find a place to practice their religion free of persecution by the English crown. It took another 160 years before the concept of religious freedom changed from just for protecting the practice of the majority group’s religion to Constitutionally enshrined tolerance of all to practice their religion free from government restrictions and persecution, prohibiting the establishment of a state religion that meant the separation of church and state. Those. provisions were incorporated in the First Amendment :“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religions, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”
To reach an agreement from the desire of colonialists to protect only their own colony’s majorities’ religious practices to protecting everyone else’s took time and bitter experiences. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony hung Quakers for not going along with their concept of purification. Roger Williams left the Colony to found Rhode Island as a result. Nearly every colony had established their state approved religion before 1776 and some, like Maryland, found themselves entangled in anti-Catholic turmoil.
Interpretation of the meaning of the First Amendment is constantly under pressure for revision by conservative religious groups who want to expand its meaning to suit their own brand of theology, sometimes to the detriment of others who hold different beliefs and values. A changing ideological makeup of the Courts will help the religious right find success for years to come
In our divisive partisan times there is a concerted fast track effort by the GOP majority Senate to approve young appointees to lifetime federal bench positions who demonstrate allegiance to a very conservative religious based ideology with less regard of their professional credentials and judicial temperament. In the last Obama administration years, the GOP Senate dragged its heels in approving Obama's nominations, leaving 159 seats (1/8 of the total) vacant for a GOP Senate to fill in 2017-2018. Last week a GOP dominated Senate committee gave approval for a federal judgeship to blogger Brett Talley, a highly partisan Trump administration family member with no court trial experience and who was declared unfit to serve by the American Bar Association. With the appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court this year even past decisions could be in jeopardy of revision given the tilt of the Court to the right, including the reversal of Roe v Wade and the right to same sex marriage. It is likely to happen..
Could tax payer funded vouchers be issued for students to attend religious based schools? In Douglas County, Colorado, an election of a school board that advocated such vouchers triggered suits claiming violation of the separation of church and state, resulting in stalled court decisions, and a successful counter revolution against the voucher advocates in recent school board elections this November 7. Outside groups supporting vouchers plan to continue the legal fight. Courts have ruled against state legislation banning Sharia law on Constitutional grounds .Federal courts overturned President Trump’s “Muslim ban” twice as religious discrimination. However, with a third revision, the ban was given partial life by the Supreme Court on procedural matters, but other challenges on substance remain. A Trump executive order in October permitted employers to stop insurance coverage of birth control on religious grounds. A court case to permit businesses to refuse service to gays because of religious beliefs, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ,will be heard and decided by the US Supreme Court in 2018.
Even the the candidacy of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama reminds us of his advocacy of the public government display of the Ten Commandments to discrimination against gays were also struck down by courts on First Amendment grounds.
While Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to practice their own brand of Christianity free of the King of England’s persecution, tolerance of others was not their purpose. It was the son of the Age of Reason, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1779 and his concepts were incorporated in the First Amendment by those who argued for separation of church and state. disestablishment of state churches and protection of religious freedom.
For those who argue our country was founded on Christianity, that this is a Christian nation, it may have been so at the beginning, but it was not ultimately reflected in our Constitution. It was the Age of Reason that was the non-religious, non sectarian view which prevailed in the First Amendment. The new nation reflected Judeo-Christian values, if not a specific theology, of the dominant western European culture of the time. Our founders did acknowledge that we had rights endowed to us, the people, by the Creator. Still fought by atheists is whether we are indeed “one nation under God” and much has been made that Masonic symbolism permeates our national symbols and architecture. The model used as a form of government by our founders mostly was Roman. The philosophers drawn upon in the enlightenment and age of reason by Jefferson were Greek and their 18th century interpreters. A motivating pragmatic reason may have been the history of bloody wars and divisiveness of the Catholic-Protestant conflict that swept England and Europe for centuries after the Reformation, as well as the unfairness of Kings who claimed they had the divine right to govern absolutely. By banning a state religion and providing for the separation of church and state, those bloody religious based civil wars were made less likely.
Dec. 4 2017 update.
In the recent version of the tax bill that passed out of the Senate and is on the way to conference committee, Orin Hatch sneaked in an amendment that permits tax deductions for the cost of going to a private school...any...including religious. However, for expenses parents may have to attend public school, there is no tax break. Expect this to be challenged in court.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/trump-rule-limits-obamacare-s-birth-control-coverage-requirement
Also, see the 9/19/17 blog posting on this site: Islamphobia Comes to Grand County.
