Why the US does not, should not, have a national church

  ( Update: 6/26/2024 in a stand alone posting, too) I saw a posting saying that even though God and other Christian-related words do not appear in the Constitution, the signers of our historical documents used the term to date it: "in the year of our Lord." That is how date was expressed in those days. That was not a sign of those agreeing to permit a theocracy.  Now, please show me where the intent of the First Amendment was to establish a national religion or church, . You can't, and it was on purpose. Jefferson advocated the Age of Reason, when men had the freedom to come to their own conclusions. Madison because religion had caused centuries of bloody wars in Europe and England and did not want to repeat that. https://theconversation.com/how-jefferson-and-madisons... 

We would be much more unified as a country if religion would butt out of government and politics. Using the government to promote and evangelize your religion is extremely divisive. First amendment: no state religion...and our founders were so wise. I am a Christian, too, just not the  kind that Project 2025 promotes..

The GOP's embrace of Proect 2025, geared to go into practice in day one of a Trump presidency, has as its intent to establish a theocracy in America.  https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/project-2025-us-bishops-cant-stand-silently-political-sidelines#:~:t     From the piece: "Project 2025 operationalizes the tenets of white Christian nationalism on such issues as climate change, education, immigration, systemic racism, and abortion. Contrasting the scholars' policies with the bishops' positions on such high-profile concerns reveals what makes the Republican game plan so dangerous.)

The agreement of two adversaries on that issue is not the only reason, but experience as colonies showed the danger of having a national religion. There was already a great deal of diversity, and where a colony did attempt it, it was unwise and created problems, more often than not..  For example, Massachusetts was so puritan-dominated that a group led by Roger Williams split off and founded Rhode Island.   

So many wars had been fought over religion in England when our founders were contemplating what kind of a country this new land would be.  Some of our forefathers were protestant, and others were not.  When the country was first settled in the 1600s, it went through periods in some colonies that had established their own state religions.  We know the stories. Perhaps those who claim this was a Christian nation so, therefore, we should have a state religion has to face the fact that what was considered Christian in one colony was not the same church in another, and it is clear from the militancy today exhibited by the newly minted white Christian nationalists there is no room for those who are Christian, but not with the same interpretations of the scriptures or even with the same priories.  I have given this much thought and let me repeat some  excerpts from my prior blog postings.

How freedom of religion came to be in the Bill of Rights was because of the diversity of experiences in the original colonies. The pilgrims famously sought religious freedom to practice their own brand of Christianity, but it was freedom for them, not everyone. Some colonies like Massachusetts had established state religions with results we ought to remember, such as  Salem witch hunts, hanging or burning at the stake of heretics,  The Scarlet  Letter,  and Puritan overreach causing breakaway founding of Rhode Island by Roger Williams for religious freedom. The success of the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies not having a state-sponsored religion had been triumphant in keeping internal peace. Fresh in the founders' knowledge of English and European recent histories were centuries of war between protestants and Catholics, the root of many conflicts. 

Christian Nationalists are waiting in the wings for the second coming of Trump as they seek to get even more political power to make their theocracy become a reality. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/20/donald-trump-allies-christian-nationalism-00142086 They are already in positions of political power and are making plans to implement their movement by using the government to do their converting on their behalf.  They are already planning to ride on the skirts of MAGA into the White House which will give them access to all of the reins of power. Those part of the Christian Nationalist movement like Speaker Mike Johnson, were third in line to the presidency. advocates theology that has something in common with the Taliban of Afghanistan that sets medieval rules and uses government to enforce what they believe is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in all phases of citizens' lives, private or public,   MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: The GOP is becoming the American Taliban?

The most recent realization of the Christian Nationalist extremist to use government power to force the vast majority of women to bow down to their ideology is banning in-vitro fertilization. in the meantime, the state gets an F in infant and maternal mortality. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/alabama/report-card

So far as education is concerned, Alabama ranks near the bottom, number 45, as well, in the rankings of states. https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075

Alabama also ranks as the 49th lowest state in per capita income.  https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=pcpi1

Alabama ranks in the top ten states depending upon federal funding as part of their state budgets. https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/

 The Alabama ban on invitro fertilization is a backdoor attempt to say life begins with an embryo, not at viability. It lays to groundwork for banning any pills taken early in the abortion process and even to ban contraception. " In all, fewer than 15 percent of fertilized eggs will result in a birth..” per the National Institues of Health. Frozen eggs are potential human beings but rarely become actual ones until it is implanted in a human and develop successfully. Jul 14, 2020 per the National Institute of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670474/#:~:text  The logic escapes me: ban the potential of birth by those who supposedly treasure life. The assumed  purpose however, is  to get the Trump-dominated Supreme Court to rule their way to pave the way government to control even more of reproduction rights 

From a November 2. 2023 blog posting:    I am grateful I do not live in a theocracy. When we became a nation with the adoption of the Constitution, the separation of church from state was at the top of the list of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly says the government cannot establish a religion, the foundation statement of the separation of church and state. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ")  The Christian right has been active in narrowing the interpretation of the First Amendment, and the Christian nationalist movement has made it a goal to eliminate this separation altogether.  Even Jesus referenced separating loyalties from government and God on matters of taxation.: "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21 NASB). 

 

4th of July and the Arab spring

My column appearing in both the on line, e, and print editions to day in the Sky Hi Daily News...

 

No one meeting in the Continental Congress in 1776 could have imagined that their Declaration of Independence from Britain would inspire popular revolts and uprisings 235 years later in lands very different and far away.

The young people leading the Arab Spring used the words of the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights to rally supporters and to couch their goals as rights to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Principles so eloquently put to quill pen in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson were fleshed out and codified in the first 10 amendments of the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) later during its ratification process. Both documents have become the ideals and aspirations of many young leaders in the Middle East and North Africa, which they extolled in text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and oratory.

Elections this fall in Egypt and Tunisia will tell whether the meaning of those words will be fully understood and applied by those going to the polls. There is always the possibility that some non-democratic force will win out, but a semblance of a Jeffersonian democracy is possible in those countries.

The transition from oppressed subject of a monarchy to revolution to democratic self-governance was relatively easy for the newly minted 13 not yet fully united states of America. The colonialists had experience in decades with the practice of self-government through their colonial legislative bodies. They used the English parliamentary procedures as a model, a structure that translated to order of debate, compromise, and law-making. For that reason John Adams and Thomas Jefferson worked effectively in a familiar process, though they were temperamentally and culturally very different.

Colonialists also could draw on a legal system based upon English law. In short, they spoke a common language of governance.

Independence in that hot summer of 1776 was not a revolt against the form of democracy. The patriots were in revolt against a monarchy and parliament that would not let them use the tools of democracy to pass their own laws they themselves could enforce, levy their own taxes, control their own militias or even have representation in the British parliament.

When the colonies attempted to boycott British goods and refused to pay taxes levied on them, the British parliament set about to punish and penalize them, closing their colonial assemblies and dictating their governance. By July 4, 1776, the patriots had already fought at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill and had come to the conclusion that any change in British policies would not happen. Independence was the only option.

Unlike American patriots, those in North Africa who successfully overthrew dictators and monarchies do not have much of a democratic platform on which to build, though Egypt does have a structure in place. Unlike a tribally fragmented Afghanistan where loyalty to a national government is at best secondary and Jeffersonian democracy is not even a dream, Egypt and Tunisia have loyalty to a national identity and a group of activists willing to die for their rights .

Knowledge of the form of democratic government is no guarantee that democracy will take root. I recall a conversation with a Ugandan diplomat attending his first United Nations session on the eve of his country becoming independent. I expressed concern that they would be able to govern themselves. The diplomat assured me that as a former British colony, Uganda would be successful.

Instead, Uganda devolved into 25 years of tribal bloodshed, revolution, ethnic and tribal cleansing. President Idi Amin became the icon of bloody dictatorships that would haunt the rest of the former colonies of sub Sahara Africa for many decades.

We can hope countries throwing off oppression can develop their own democratic institutions and traditions. It will be particularly difficult for those divided by ethnic, tribal, religious differences with a citizenry that puts loyalty to their nation secondary. They can succeed if their citizens unify and do not abandon goals to protect inalienable human rights which our own patriots and founders pioneered.

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