Zobel said:

---

The US was founded as a nominally Christian nation. For the time period of the writing of the constitution not establishing a national religion would have meant as a variant of Christianity. It wasn't in anyone's mind that this would be something else. I know you know that many states at the time had state religions, and many were explicitly Christian in their constitutions or oaths of office. Until sixty some odd years ago we even had explicit immigration policies to continue this general feature of our society.

Trying to eradicate Christianity from our laws, culture, and society is a radical position that has gained traction under a historically tone deaf understanding of our laws at best, but probably more likely an intentional agenda of change.

---

Except the framers were perfectly aware that their limit of religion in government meant limiting Christianity in government and opening the government to those of other faiths. They were quite explicit about it. The federal government was not nominally Christian. It wasn't Christian. Religion is mentioned twice in the Constitution. In both places it is limited rather then enshrined.

And while the vast majority of the population were Christian, there were sizable numbers of deists, free thinkers, and Jews who immigrated before the Civil War and Muslims amongst the enslaved. Race mattered more in immigration than religion, though there absolutely was religious discrimination.

Here's the thing, it's not 1723, 1823, or 1923. We're a religiously plural society and we were founded as a government that accepted that pluralism and sought to put limits on one faith holding power over another, no matter what broad category that faith belonged to.

AggieRain said:

---

Sapper Redux said:

---

AggieRain said:

---

Sapper Redux said:

---

Quote:

---

The ideological cat is already out of the bag in many classrooms anyway. Only Christian tenants seem to be off limits

---

Yeah, I see this and think it's just creating an excuse to impose your beliefs on people who don't share them. You not agreeing with a belief doesn't mean it shouldn't be brought up in a classroom. You being uncomfortable with a belief doesn't mean it should be off-limits. But it says something when the response to increased diversity and complexity in the classroom is to try and reimpose dominance.

---

Good grief. The utter lack of self awareness in this post is astounding. Never change, Sapper.

---

Really? I don't recall anyone demanding all schools to post an LGBTQ flag in a frame in every classroom and mandate a period of gender reflection every day at school.

---

YOU would mandate it though. If you had the actual power to do so. I don't think for a second that there isn't a hyper progressive mandate you wouldn't enforce if you had any authority.

---

Lol. How's that straw man coming along?

Pluralism and freedom of religion are not the same as absence of them, or if their influence. You cannot scrub Christianity from the laws of this country - there won't be anything left.

Zobel said:

---

Pluralism and freedom of religion are not the same as absence of them, or if their influence. You cannot scrub Christianity from the laws of this country - there won't be anything left.

---

You seem to confuse influence with presence and seem to assume that Christianity defined the culture of the era rather than it being one aspect of the culture. An important aspect to be sure, but not above the culture or escaping change and influence by other cultural, socioeconomic, and geographic factors.

A large number of the framers would not have recognized your brand of Christianity as a legitimate approach. The idea that this is a "Christian nation," would have meant little to Catholics in 1789, who weren't considered Christians by most in America, or the Orthodox for that matter. So while you claim to be making a historical-based argument, it's one that smooths over a horrendous number of bumps. And still doesn't get to the point where the 10 Commandments of one religion should be plastered in public school classrooms in 2023. The sabbath isn't holy in the Constitution. There's nothing about false idols or the jealousy of God in the Constitution. So what's it doing in a classroom?

Zobel said:

---

Pluralism and freedom of religion are not the same as absence of them, or if their influence. You cannot scrub Christianity from the laws of this country - there won't be anything left.

---

Should the Christian influence on the laws and foundation of this country be used to justify religious favoritism?

Zobel said:

---

The US was founded as a nominally Christian nation. For the time period of the writing of the constitution not establishing a national religion would have meant as a variant of Christianity. It wasn't in anyone's mind that this would be something else. I know you know that many states at the time had state religions, and many were explicitly Christian in their constitutions or oaths of office. Until sixty some odd years ago we even had explicit immigration policies to continue this general feature of our society.

Trying to eradicate Christianity from our laws, culture, and society is a radical position that has gained traction under a historically tone deaf understanding of our laws at best, but probably more likely an intentional agenda of change.

---

This argument seems absent of the historical context.

The argument is a two fold one, either incorporation is valid or it isn't.

Either the second amendment applies in California or it doesn't. Either the 1st and 4th amendment applies in Texas or it doesn't and so on. Incorporation may have happened one amendment at a time but I don't see a coherent reasoning for partial incorporation.

Second, disestablishmentation was an organic process that started far before the civil war and was a natural progression of states adopting our national ideology bakes into our founding. Just as our national ideology of equality slowly manifested through our systems and governments.

Most of these state churches you can name were already abolished prior to the civil war. Before 1800, 7 states went so far as to abolish clergy from political positions.

The founders were a remarkably religiously diverse group for the time with far more deists among the top ranks than statistically likely.

In 1776 church attendance of the population was very low (17% purported here, I've seen 20% elsewhere). Our peak religiousness happened well after our founding bolstered by great awakening's and cultural shifts. The general population would identify as Christian but very nominally so. The hyper-Christian national identity that some seem to imagine is far from the reality. And our progression towards our modern views on separation has been solidified for over 50 years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/11/26/the-way-we-werent-religion-in-colonial-america/6cb64903-30f4-435e-a415-6be0f0465bfe/

Completely misses the point. The fact that state religions at the time of ratification existed in 8 of 13 colonies shows that you cannot use the constitution as prima facie evidence the way it is being attempted. No more no less. In fact the raw evidence on the face of it goes completely the opposite way.

kurt vonnegut said:

---

Zobel said:

---

Pluralism and freedom of religion are not the same as absence of them, or if their influence. You cannot scrub Christianity from the laws of this country - there won't be anything left.

---

Should the Christian influence on the laws and foundation of this country be used to justify religious favoritism?

---

this is the right tack, and it cuts right back to the discussion we have previously about values and assumptions.

the fact of the matter is, religious favoritism in the end is a matter of perspective. what you consider as "christian" aspects of our law versus "secular" is just another way of saying what has consensus culturally for us even among non-Christians or non-practicing Christians and what doesn't. i hope you can see that is not concrete at all. as consensus changes, religious vs secular changes - which means there is no actual distinction.

just as a matter of basic history it is clear no one in this country ninety years ago thought that putting the ten commandments on the supreme court building was some kind of constitutional conundrum or represented some christian theocratic statement.

what this boils down to - your question, i mean - is raw pragmatism in the form of social or political power. lenin's old "who? whom?" repackaged in the form of cultural struggle. and the only decider of that question is who has the power.

i think the answer to the previous question - the difference between secular and religious - is just consensus was entirely satisfactory.

here is no different, then. what is religious favoritism and what is just normal behavior for our society are just a matter of consensus.

what's irrational is trying to cut the legs off the ladder you're standing on, which seems to be the underlying approach here. and i don't really just mean on the matter of faith. people talk about our constitution, and it seems to me to be the exact same problem. these things are somewhere between engineered designs and organic entities, but either way both have systems and sub-systems. there are relationships between parts and wholes, and at some point if you make too many arbitrary changes things begin to fail because the system as whole is no longer coherent.

i suppose that is my bigger concern. for example there is not, to me, a material difference between the debate about same sex marriage and a debate about pedophilia. the concepts and prohibitions that are brought to bear in both cases come from one place and are not common to our western cultural inheritance. the only difference is one of consensus - "religious" objections. that's a moving target.

and taking that a little further - expanding now that i have a moment - craigernaught's objection of essentially "i don't want that taught in school" is really just a different way of saying "i don't want to risk it being taught in a way i don't agree with / by someone who isn't of my sect". but this too just another appeal to consensus. if it was taught well, in a way that we find edifying and agreeable, we would encourage it. that's why we don't have a problem with non-parent teachers in sunday school. again this is just consensus though. plenty of people (like me) see no issue with combining the two - so-called secular and religious education. and of course this combination is more normal in western history than their separation.

and the last step here - is that there is no way to be free of bias in this regard. AGC brings this point up correctly... the right follow-up to craig's point is - who decides what is taught in school? who decides what is secular and what is religious? how do we incorporate these moral and philosophical axioms or presuppositions into non-religious law? again the simple reality is by power, which is just consensus under another name (in a notional democracy, anyway).

so the answer to your questions is: of course, if that is what the people want. we did it for decades with no problem, because that was the collective will of the people. our population has changed, and so the net vector of that collective will has changed, and so the norms and attitudes change.

y'all seem to think that by recognizing the underlying truth of these things that i'm somehow advocating for some position or another. i'm not. the problem is the double-minded thinking that there is somehow some higher motive or ideal or philosophical plane some people are operating on. where are you going to find the angels to run this pure secular system without injecting their personal biases about what should and ought be taught, or done, or made illegal?

Zobel said:

---

two generations, about sixty years. In what way is that not modern?

I didn't appeal to the founders authority. just pointing out the flaw in the logic pointing to them as some kind of witness to preventing the Ten Commandments from being used in public buildings.

---

Its been two generations since the lemon test, the current precedent has been set. This was not a sudden or radical change but a steady evolution with various milestones going back to the early republic.

I'm not saying you can appeal to the founders for the final form of our laws on religion anymore than you can on race. But you can appeal to the seeds of the first amendment and declaration on both issues rather reasonably as well as other specific actions during our early republic. And there is historical precedent among founding fathers for avoiding direct government funding of religious education. Where to draw the line on religious education and hanging Bible verses on the wall is a fair question. I don't see a compelling reason to do so outside of specific classes with specific contexts where those rules would be hung aside many other similar ones.

These are not ideas divorced from our founding, but rather trees that grew from seedlings. They weren't suddenly planted nearly full grown in the 70s.

Macarthur said:

---

dermdoc said:

---

Zobel said:

---

The only reason this is a problem is because our society has become wildly divergent on areas that used to be basic common understandings.

I don't have an issue with any of my kids teachers talking to them about matters of faith because they go to my church, and because I know their teachers. Of course they are at a private school run by my church.

Not so long ago in this country those two things would have been true for many public schools in most communities as well.

---

Great post. I am still working because I want my grandkids to go to a private religious school where I know the teachers and administrators.

Public schools were like that too when I was young and up until the last 3 or 4 decades. It is sad.

---

I guess my issue is that I think there is a type of 'old-timers syndrome' at work here. I think nostalgia can be a really corrosive thing. I can tell you, I now look back at much of my school years, and I can see a ton of toxicity that was there in a small town in Texas. Sure, on the surface, things were great, esp for me as a white male, but that was not the reality for a lot of people.

I suppose you can say that 'in the good old days' kids weren't faced with these crazy things like LGBTQ and facing the reality of the legacy of slavery, but that's only because those things were purposely not talked about and deliberately pushed into the shadows.

People that are 'different' have been so incredibly persecuted in generations past and it just seems to me that many folks that want 'the norm' or things of the past, just simply don't want those things even recognized. Two quotes I've seen recently speak to the issue we are seeing, IMO.

"Racism is so ingrained in America that when you speak out on racism it appears you are speaking out against America."

"When you are accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression."

Certainly quotes and bumper stickers are insufficient to encapsulate such complex issues, but I do think they can provide a jumping off point to asking why these things bother some people and not others.

---

Right is right and wrong is wrong. Read Romans 1. There is nothing new under the sun.

And I might say that the same could be said for. "A young person perspective". There are two sides.

What are we "progressing" towards?

It's the "good old days" fallacy. Assuming things were better "back in the day" while ignoring the negatives. Same mindset behind MAGA. Longing for the good old days because they were good for YOU. I doubt any gay, minority, and/or non religious people are feeling super nostalgic about those days.

School prayer was always unconstitutional. Always. Same with displaying the Ten Commandments. Textbook unconstitutional state endorsement of religion. Just because schools got away it it back then doesn't mean it was okay.

And forcing us backwards into this position, while ignoring the real problems our schools are facing, is quite depressing to see.

Quote:

---

School prayer was always unconstitutional. Always. Same with displaying the Ten Commandments. Textbook unconstitutional state endorsement of religion. Just because schools got away it it back then doesn't mean it was okay.

---

this is an absolutely ridiculous opinion masquerading as fact. the rulings of the supreme court are not immutable reality.

by way of exploring your opinion here - do you agree that Roe "was always unconstitutional. Always."?

Zobel said:

---

Question for the presentists here, do you think any state with a declared religion is a bad thing? Likewise for any state favoring one religion or another in any way?

---

I would take some exception to that label, but I assume you are including me in this. I think it could come down to what those values are and to their implementation. A state with a declared religion may have a set of values which includes the free practice of other religions. Or a state with a declared religion may have a set of values which actively promotes one set of beliefs while forcibly prohibiting others (thinking of somewhere like Iran).

When people lived in isolated and homogeneous groups, government sponsored religion is a less oppressive thing. In a larger and more diversity society, government sponsored religion is more likely to produce oppression and favoritism toward some citizens over others. The condition of pluralism demands some level of cooperation and understanding between groups with competing values. A diverse society may agree upon certain rules necessary for basic cohabitation. Those rules could include setting up government infrastructure / responsibilities, taxation, laws against theft or violence, etc. These rules could be voted upon and agreed upon by the diverse residents - as you've described in your earlier post.

And these agreed upon rules could absolutely include provisions for allowing individuals the freedom to practice their religion in the manner they see fit permitted that practice does not infringe on someone else's right to the same. A society that values freedom of religion does its best to find the best balance within its laws between preserving that religious freedom and any other competing value.

We live in modern times. We don't live in ancient times. I see no purpose in discussing what is good in ancient societies. In modern society, I think state religion or state favoring one religion over another is bad. And I think it is bad because it does not serve the make up of modern citizenship.

The idea that legal favoritism should be imparted on a religious majority is only good for that majority when they are a majority. 30 years from now, Christianity may not be the majority. Hypothetically - 30 years from now, laws are passed that put added tax burdens on Christianity, prohibit Christian prayer or displays in public, and remove other legal protections for Christianity. I believe most Christians would say this would be a bad thing. But why? If legal favoritism should be enjoyed by the majority, then this is simply consistency. Do Christians asking for favoritism today get to complain tomorrow when secularists gain favoritism and begin to enjoy that priviledge? I suppose they can complain, but no one is going to listen to them.

In my opinion, Christians who are looking forward (rather than backward) should recognize that state sponsored religion and favoritism toward the majority is a tactic that might not serve them long term. And it might not serve them long term because we have increasingly mixed and diverse societies. Laws will change to serve new majorities. Do you want those new laws to play favorites? I don't. I think it will be a sad day in America when non-Christians begin to treat Christians the way Christians used to treat non-Christians.

The pendulum of values in American society is swinging away from Christianity. Laws like the 10 Commandments bill does not serve to slow down that pendulum swing. It serves to accelerate it. Is it smart to bully the kid that is someday going to be much bigger than you? Or is it smart to make that kid an ally who will respect your values someday?

Recognition of the roots of our country is fine, however, I take exception to those roots being beyond reproach. Slavery is part of the roots of our country. Over time, attitudes began to change toward slavery and changes were made. I believe that everyone on this board would agree with the abandonment of those values.

Our Christian roots should be no different. Tradition should neither be indiscriminately discarded nor should it be idolized. Just as slavery was abandoned when it no longer represented the values of the people, so should our legal system abandon Christian ideas or religious favoritism when it no longer serves the people.

Aggrad08 said:

---

Zobel said:

---

Question for the presentists here, do you think any state with a declared religion is a bad thing? Likewise for any state favoring one religion or another in any way?

---

I view it pretty similarly to a state declaring a favored race or ethnicity or A favored political party. It's highly likely to manifest as oppression in a multiracial society. And I don't see a very compelling reason to do so given those costs.

The funny thing is if the US actually practiced this the most numerous victims would be Catholics and orthodox such as yourself. As Christianity really isn't even one religion but a cluster of them.

The most numerous religious view in a society may ebb and flow, should favoritism Shift 180 degrees with a simple plurality?

Why would modern societies want to entertain this notion?

---

stop arguing against the straw man. i'm not advocating for a theocratic state, nor have i ever. i'm not saying the US should have a declared religion. sometimes a question is just a question. this discussion is not persuasive. i'm not trying to convince you that the US should be a theocracy - it would be strange since i don't believe that. it's exploratory.


we seem to be at this weird place where y'all think your present ideas about government and how societies ought to structure themselves are somehow universal. there are dozens and dozens of counter-examples to consider in history, and several interesting ones in modern day society.

you seem to suggest that as consensus gives rise to what is normative, in a society that is heterogenous you will have less consensus, so the degree to which the government should favor one group or another (i do think it is super interesting that you jumped from religion to race and ethnicity, by the way) should be linked to the homogeneity of that state's body politic. this is not a "should be" but more of an expectation, right?

isn't this exactly what we see around the world, and in history?

I've always kind of thought it was funny that so many "small government conservatives" want to empower the government to teach their children what religious beliefs to hold and how to worship. As a secularist, I think that's an awful idea. But, if we non-religious folks can't stop the wall between church and state from being torn down then perhaps we ought to take advantage of that situation for all its worth. By meshing church and state together you don't just give religion more power over the government, you also give the government more power over religion.

So sure, let's allow religious instruction in the classroom. Who's going to be setting the curriculum as the percentage of people in this country strongly adhering to Christianity continues its steady decline? Not them.