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The original intent of that was too keep the US from having a "Church" like the "Church of England". It was to keep the government from making laws to say what religion was "right" and what was "wrong".
What's happening of late is stupid though and has little if nothing to do with Separation of Church & State. Having christmas decorations or parties at school do not equal "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". In fact saying that you can't celebrate christmas on school grounds or pray there, etc. is closer to what the constitution is trying to keep from happening!
To be clear there is absolutely no restriction on an individual praying in school or in any government building. That is violation of your right of free exercise. Conversely, your kid's second grade teacher cannot lead the class in facing Mecca for daily prayers.
To be clear there is absolutely no restriction on an individual praying in school or in any government building. That is violation of your right of free exercise. Conversely, your kid's second grade teacher cannot lead the class in facing Mecca for daily prayers.
A teacher leading the class in prayer, is completely different from leading prayer before a football game.
in the first instance the child/person is a captive audience with no choice in the matter. The second everyone has the choice to be there or not, to participate in the prayer or not.
As a parent, and non-Christian, I would be PISSED at the first... and it wouldn't matter one bit to me with the second. In fact... been there done that. When my sons and I are someplace and someone starts a prayer (of any kind that does not belong to our religion) we simple bow our heads out of respect and in silence.
What difference does it make if you follow no religion? No one is FORCING you to follow a religion! Who does that make any sense at all to what I was saying?
If you aren't forced to follow a religion, you have the freedom from religion. We're not talking about atheists having to deal with their Christian neighbor putting up a Christmas tree.
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and how exactly does the 14th amendment have ANYTHING to do with this conversation?
You stated Congress shall make no law... It includes the States, not just Congress.
Also, lest we forget, for decades the government could just ignore people whose rights it violated, thanks to the lack of mechanisms for them to actually get into court. Now we have civil rights legislation that enables people to hold the government accountable.
Before that, not nearly as much got challenged in any serious way. Even the courts condoned awful abuses of civil rights in decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and Buck v. Bell.
How anyone can think that things have not improved since then is beyond my comprehension.
So atheists are afforded no freedoms since they don't follow a religion? And FYI, the entire Bill of Rights was incorporated into the States with the passing of the 14th Amendment. And I assure you, you should be dang glad that happened.
You inadvertently offer great evidence that the 'original intent' was Not to keep religion out of gov't..
The 14th amendment wasn't adopted until 1868 and it took roughly 80 years after that before the SC applied the establishment clause to the states. A bunch of states even had state religions after the Constitution. There's so much historical evidence that the original intent wasn't to separate gov't. and religion, only total ideologues would argue otherwise.
It's both. You can't be free to exercise your choice of religion if you can't also be free from religion.
This is true, unfortunately our founders didn't choose their words as carefully as they could've.
Rather than "freedom of" or "freedom from" religion, I wish we'd have anticipated the French revolutionaries and called for "universal liberty of conscience" so there would be no casuistry later, as there is in America.
Yes. We are in the last days. Jesus is coming back and he says in the Bible it would all be like this before he returned. The liberal agenda is a very calculated and specific plan that Satan used on the romans. He updated it to make it suit this generation and look how he has used them to destroy this country in almost every way. Very sad. There's really no hope. America's people now mostly hate God. We should be looking to Heaven now in these days. He is coming back to get us and he will take us home.
Allen, do you know how much that sounds like a crazy homeless man talking to himself on a street corner?
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