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  • From: Chris Rossi <rossi AT webslingerZ.com>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Regional bashing
  • Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:29:29 -0500

Nathaniel Florin wrote:
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.

It seems to me that the intelligent way to sell seperation of church and state is to not stress so much the freedom of the state from religion, but the freedom of religion from the state. Do folks really want the gummint telling them how to worship? It seems like even the not so brilliant would be able to see that even amongst christianity there's no real consensus on how it ought to be practiced and what exactly jesus thinks it is we all should do. It always seemed obvious to me growing up that seperation of church and state was primarily to protect religion. Large chunks of New England were founded by followers of weird ass sects of Christianity that were persecuted in England where the state religion was a different weird ass sect of Christianity. The beauty of the secular state is it allows us all to live and work together regardless of what we call God. That doesn't seem like too sophisticated a concept to me. Normal people ought to be able to grok that.

rossi






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