Originally posted by caltour:Religious groups were treated as separate under the law for a good reason. Madison and the other founding fathers knew that churches had to be kept strictly segregated from political life because they would almost certainly exert disprortionate influence on our government and destabilize our democracy. They knew that churches were among the only organizations that had the wealth, bureaucratic skills and power (not to mention the particular emotional power of religious faith) to dominate political life in such a way that it would no longer really be a democracy. They remembered the historical lessons of old Europe, where clerics had long been adept at scheming for domination of nation states. Even in the 1700s, American churches were easily powerful enough to dominate our fledgling government. Madison and Jefferson and the others therefore knew that separation of church and state was essential. That's why they wrote into our Constitution the rules I discussed in my last post.
For the same reasons, churches today should restrain themselves from political activity. Democracy is all about letting everyone have equal say. Churches could easily distort and even subvert democracy, as they harness the unique combined power of religious belief, tons of cash, and extensive grass roots organization.
According to my previous quote from George Washington, we cannot separate moral and religious beliefs out as the basis of good law making, to do so is at our own peril. In this respect, I disagree with your assessment here. The fact is that seperation of church/state is just as much to encourage faith and to protect religious practices in society, as is evidenced by the fact that America is one of the most religious countries in the world today. Your argument is that by endorsing state sponsored religion, it strengthens/empowers the religion. My argument, and I believe the wisdom of the founders as well, is that state sponsorship/endorsement of any one religion corrupts both the gov't and the religion, weakening both inevitably. To keep them seperate is to allow both to grow strongly, and both to stay relevant (as each has a different and proper focus) as is evidenced in our current society.
Yes you are correct about the founders taking lessons from clergy of the past, but the lesson learned was that ultimately, those gov't's and the state sponsored religions became non-relevant to the people, both failed. As a result, Europe is largely a post-Christian, indeed even post-religious, society, especially if you look at the percentage numbers in any one European country of those willing to profess any one faith, and gov't corruption is much more widespread than here in the U.S. as a rule.
