devilschild wrote:
I'm neither liberal or conservative. Though I am far more left wing. I meet eye to eye with liberals on a lot more subjects, such as marijuana, gay marriage, and abortion. I do agree with conservatives on a few things, but a lot of conservatives tend to base their political views on the bible which they shouldn't because of separation of church and state. A lot of our founding fathers were very critical of religion.
The founding fathers were a heterogonous group of people. Most of he founding fathers were Christians of various different denominations, and there was a significant minority of deists an other religious affiliations. But what tended to unite and guide their political designs for the nations were their philosophies and political philosophies. This was largely dominated by Republicanism and Natural Rights Theory.
The separation of church and state espoused by the Founding Fathers was not a separation of religious and political considerations or a banishment of religious matters from the public square. It was about separating "The Church" from "The State". As in, keeping the organizations of the government and the organizations of organized religion independent of each other. They tended to believe that tying together these organizations lead to weakness and corruption for both. They also tended to think that free association in religion was good for the spiritual individuals and religious denominations. The point of their separation of church and state was to say that the government would not have an official national church, that it would not mandate or prohibit people from associating with any religious denomination, and that people, individual and collective, have freedom of association and freedom of exercise in religious matters. As it is stated in the First Amendment, "
Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
This seperation of church and state dos not mandate a separation of religious and political matters in people in office. The holders of office, politicians, and civil activists are free to hold their positions, and to support or oppose things, for whatever reason they see fit; including religious reasons. This is evidenced by article 6 of the constitution, which state that no religious test shall be made as a qualification for holding office. When they debated this section they acknowledged that this would allow people of any religious belief to enter office and potentially allow their religious beliefs to influence politics.
Back in their times their where those who tried to abolish religion from the public square, to which John Adams stated that those who wished to remove religion from the public square were as extreme as those who wanted to establish a theocracy.
Furthermore, during the period of the founding fathers, like in other times, there was plenty of religious and philosophic debate. Members of the founding fathers were involved in such debates. They had similarities and differences in views amongst them. Many offered critiques of various theological and theo-political issues. But most of them would not be adequately described as very critical of religion. Though a significant number of them were highly critical of organized religion (they tended not to like the kind of highly bureaucratized church organizations that 17th and 18th century Europe had) and theocracy.
08 Aug 2015, 11:22 am
