alt.education

http://www.edailynews.info/articles/2008/03/14/news/news07.txt
Church, state discussed at Bogalusa Rotary Club

By Bob Ann Breland

The Daily News

BOGALUSA - St. Tammany attorney Warren Montgomery spoke to the Bogalusa
Rotary Club this week on the issue of religion and the separation of church
and state. He stated that it is a very complicated subject, most people
approach the subject with strong feelings and that it really is a big deal.

He gave three examples of the relationship between religion and government.

The first was the religious state, noting that ancient Israel, the Holy
Roman Empire and also present day Iran, had this type of relationship,
where religion sets government policy.

The second example Montgomery used was the antagonistic state, when
religion is suppressed. He drew attention to the Communist Soviet Union,
modern day China and Cuba, where the state tries to do away with religion
completely or control it.

The third example is when church and state operate in separate spheres. He
noted that France is the model for this type and their constitution
actually says it is a secular state. Before the French revolution, the
church and the king were one and the same, he said.

He went on to explain that the U.S. Constitution doesn't say that - and
indeed it stays away from saying that the U.S. is secular. In the U.S.
history of religion and government, the constitution doesn't say much about
religion except that the government is prohibited from establishing any
religion.

He said religion has always played an important part in American life with
such things as naming a chaplain for the House and Senate, in declaring
days such as Thanksgiving and Christmas as federal holidays, observance of
the National Day of Prayer and religious symbols on public buildings.


He noted that of the original signers of the U.S. Constitution, most were
evangelical, with one Catholic, but they all professed a strong religious
belief. He said they left England because the king controlled the church
and they didn't want that to happen in America. They looked back in history
and chose not to make this a secular nation.

Montgomery said in 1950, the Supreme Court started taking a different view
on what had been previously ruled when they prohibited school prayer. The
high court declared there should be a wall between church and government,
and instituted the separation of church and state. Montgomery said this
idea was taken out of context from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson,
not from the Constitution.

The court began to rule religion out of the public sphere, as they started
to take power away from the state, he said. He also talked briefly about
some of the most recent suits by the ACLU and rulings by the courts.

He quoted George Washington from his farewell speech following two terms as
President: "Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life,
if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the
instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution
indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of
peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that
national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

He closed with the thought that the founding fathers took a favorable view
of religion, but an unfavorable view of government controlling religion.

Ellis Sampson, program chairman for the day, introduced Montgomery.



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You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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