RTP-area local music and culture

[Nathaniel Florin <npflorin AT yahoo.com>]

I wrote:

> Unitarianism blah blah blah

I don't think that made sense. The point I was trying
to make is that the Constitution bans the state
establishment of religion, but it is not 100% crytsal
clear, and that a deep understanding of it requires
some digging into historical niceties that will be
beyond your average voter's ken, not to mention the
ken of a voter whose vested interest means he doesn't
want to believe you. The counter-arguers will have all
sorts of wonderful quotes about God And Our Nation
from many of the same people who wrote and signed the
Constitution, and we all know that James Madison
wasn't a flip-flopper, don't we? In short, you have to
sell the separation of church and state to a nation of
people who don't read the first half of the Second
Amendment, and that's a very hard thing to do. Not
impossible, but hard.

As for the Deism of many of the Framers, it basically
held that God set the world in motion and then got out
of the way. A Deist could easily be a good Christian
(God created the Universe; Locke's "natural law"
springs from Him)  and still support the wall of
separation (God stays out of earthly business; natural
law is imprinted in our souls and thus we don't need
religious law to lead to morality). This works
perfectly in the Framers' mental world, but not
necessarily in ours. The closest thing we have to
Deism is the Big Bang theory, and I don't think it's
the physicists over at MIT who are wanting to put the
Ten Commandments up everywhere.

Nate