THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
If you asked me what derails America, I would answer the obvious. Greed, Selfishness, and a few other “sins” are the players and the willingness to do things to skirt laws both moral and legal to achieve goals are the carrier. For those willing to travel this journey, we find the majority travel coach and a few who go first class. To them there is no ceiling on the civil law and they do what they want under their own version regardless of anyone else's right's. To me the derailing of America is all based on false GODS.
The most sacred and important law of these laws that govern us is the one that proclaims The Separation of Church and State. It seems to show prominently in many of the problems we face today. The problem is we have those who would have us not follow the guidance of the Constitution and thats the problem. It's main tenet comes direct from from the Founding fathers. It was designed to keep the law, equal for all, and not those who belonged to a specific group bound by other rules and traditions. My ire is against those who use religion as just another tool with their constituents.
IN THE BEGINNING
Our founding fathers, not to be confused with some of our current crew of religious cassocked dressed fondling fathers had some strong ideas about the definition of a “perfect union”.
Unfortunately perfect union meant something different to the "fondling fathers" and after the dust settled many wound up in jail. The Church took quick and forceful action. They moved them like peas under the three walnut shells and for a while they got away with it. Eventually the Church had no where to turn and took action. Church is not the more perfect union. Even threats of prosecution against the SEE are proposed by some groups claiming the church ignored them and covered the facts.
THE GOOD GUYS
The founding fathers were intellectually sound and knew from their own experience what was good for them and what was not. After all they knew how it was done back home. And that’s why they left mother England in the first place. Simply put they could not worship as they chose.
Experience is a good teacher and with acute wisdom they made the most important and critical statement of our democracy, the simplest one. Our leaders in that time simply wanted the faithful, “to uphold the separation of Church and State”.
Want to make it even simpler? Divide moral issues and legal issues into two categories. Let the State (Gov) protect the rights and freedoms of all. Leave the others to their own moral means to solve their issues.
RELIGION and POLITICS
Religion has embraced politics as an Octopus embraces a fish. They seemed to have more hands in more places. They call themselves the “Religious Right”. Could not be further from the truth. For they are the most dangerous people to threaten this nation.
• A South Carolina Catholic priest tells his flock that he will not offer communion to anyone who votes for President Obama because of his stand on abortion. The Vatican told him to back off. They are not in Politics for if they do get involved, they will lose their tax exemption status under the IRS.
• The same thing goes on in the Fundamentalist theatre. It’s not just the Catholic Church. Many groups because of Church Law will invade the rights of others for their beliefs. And the right nut at the right time will take a gun or bomb and kill others for these beliefs. The bombings in the Atlanta Women's clinics.
• The killing of a Pro-Abortion Doctor in Florida. This is nothing new, these over-believers, (from the latin “nutcases”) have been around since the Crusades, they were the Crusaders.
• The despicable actions of a group. The Kansas Attorney General’s office has filed a “friend of the court” brief against Fred Phelps and his church, Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church with the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorney General Steve Six was joined by 47 other states and the District of Columbia in filing an amicus brief in support of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Synder’s family against the Phelps family and the church.
“I am grateful to get the support of so many of my colleagues in this brief,” Six said. “This is an important case to the states, because so many of us have taken steps to protect grieving families during the emotional time that surrounds a loved one’s burial.” They showed up here in Tampa at a soldiers funeral. Had I been there I might have wound up in jail.
• I did not have to travel far when trying to reason with some folks. I got the same thing from neighbors, some who live 10 yards from me. Their Priest told them President Obama was Pro Choice and you should not support him. He did not deny communion but the woman was scared of the repercussions. Excuse me I thought voting booths were private. It would be none of the priests business.
CHURCH DOES NOT REPRESENT ALL
So when the Church gets involved we now have a situation that says regardless of the qualifications of the candidates the Church law is more important to your decision. Take away that Tax Exemption and you will see how quick the cash cow changes it’s direction with it’s back into the wind.
Simply put the founding fathers willed that "States actions shall not impact on the religious freedoms we all have". I used to think it meant for all of us and regardless of how you do it. But it doesn’t because of the big difference in numbers of worshippers in each religion and the offers they get. Redemption is big business. Lots of guilt out there. It acts as a buffer to the greed and selfishness. It’s an easy sell.
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY OR FORMS OF CONTROL:
Religion agrees on nothing. If you were to pick up the phone book and look under houses of Worship - Christianity, as an example you would find fifty variations of the same religion. So they bury it under free choice. Under Jewish Houses of worship, we have three, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. I have seen, even close to me in my own family, how those differences in a less stable environment could literally turn each of us against our own.
My point is there are no absolutes. It’s all about man’s interpretation of the code and since it is not pure and quite subject to interpretation, thus it is not a law for all. If we all prayed and lived the same, most Ministers and Laymen wouldn’t have any stories and jokes to tell on Sunday about the other guys, like the one about the Baptist who.......
PRIMAL CUSTOMS IN A NEW WORLD
Some wade through the water, some sprinkle water, the ever popular Baptismal water boarding, and the do it yourself bathtub drowning. Then we have singing and dancing, snake handling, adoration of rats and mice, self-flagullation and whipping, tambourine banging, smoke and incense, choral groups, junior choral groups, youth groups, senior singing group, responsive reading, bad choreography, foaming at the mouth, or glee clubbing. And for some reason I just picture God sitting there thinking to himself, "Who started this crap, I didn't".
THE RETREAT AND ABSTINENCE
Some attend retreats and conventions and occasionally they come to Vegas. A friend of mine who is a Liquor/Bar/Room Service Manager for a prominent Vegas Hotel chain once told me during some of the Religious Conventions, the hotel bars are empty, BUT room service can’t even handle the workload and the booze flows.
Other religions have hours of trance filled meditation singing Hari Krishna and Kumbaya. Hours and hours humming "My Gods better than your God, My Gods better than yours" like in a futuristic Sylvester Stalone movie.
By the way, look under legal battles and find out the words to KUMBAYA are still under entanglement as to who is the author. That’s nice, all personal belief vanishes and the rules, well structured by each religious leader for his/her groups interpretation are used for control. Not an absolute for all, not a law. We bury this under customs and traditions subchapter "anal thinking".
WINDOW DRESSING
Millions of dollars spent on Houses of Worship with ornate window dressing that would probably embarrass God himself, just to portray the Heaven on Earth. The competition for the right to be first has caused more deaths in the history of the world than any other reason. They are called Crusades. Even today on TV one of the evangelist TV personalities (The one with Gods personal cell-phone number) uses the word Crusade when the bills got to be paid. How disgustingly noble.
Thats when the moral reasoning steps in again. Mix the two with the folks who make our decisions. Congress then taking the lead and we have war. We are the people sometimes pushed to religious righteousness governed by madmen, some nothing but modern day Crusaders. Much of it started in those days.
WHO WERE THE CRUSADERS:
If you took the time to study the Crusades you would be surprised at what you would find. Understand the two sides and the grunts or foot soldiers who basically killed and died for nothing. Their motivation on both sides were based on the next world. Death through a divine act was good. Permanent yes, but good and no refunds. The Saracens got the seventy two Vestal Virgins and the Christians got an E-Ticket to skip purgatory and go directly to Heaven.
Millions took advantage of these great offers. Estimates of the two sides who burnt their dead range from two and a half million to six million. No big paychecks out there. Just a piece of cloth. And this is not about King Arthur, Robin Hood and the Lady of the Lake. This was in the name of Religion, which generally encompasses brutal, vicious, sadistic, harsh, slow death by the arrow, the spear, the balls of fire, stones, starving and torture, lots of torture. Boiling oil was not a dry skin remedy....
THE NAME GAME
Crusades were expeditions undertaken, for a 120 years by those who vowed to deliver the Holy Places from Mohammedan or Muslim tyranny. During this period the bad guys were referred to as the “Saracens”. The good guys, the CRUSADERS gets it's name, from the cross made of cloth and blessed by the Pope and worn by the Christian combatants.
Basically the term “Crusades” extends to include all wars undertaken, by vow and directed against infidels, who included but not limited to Saracens, Muslims (Mohammedans) the usual goths and pagans, heretics, Jews, and those who had been excommunicated under the rule of the pointy hats.
Religious Crusades were waged by the Spaniards against the Moors for three hundred years. European crusades were organized against the Prussians and Lithuanians, and the totally brutal extermination of the Albigensian heresy was due to a crusade.
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF CONCEPTION and DECEPTION
The crusade corresponds to a political conception which was realized in Christianity only from the eleventh to the fifteenth century; Four hundred years. This proclamation sees all peoples and sovereigns under the direction of the Popes. No exceptions for allergies, foot injuries or religious conscientiousness. All crusades were announced by the pointy hats.
I could see the late Billy Mays pitching the Crusades. BUT WAIT, bring a friend and only pay his shipping fee back in a box. After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cloth cross from the hands of the Papacy and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the church.
BENEFITS PACKAGE
The E-Ticket also granted privileges, such as exemption from civil jurisdiction, inviolability of persons or lands, etc. Of all these skirmishes involving hundreds of thousands of troops in the name of Christendom, the most important were the Eastern Crusades. Not all returned from these challenges and many nobles lost their lives and their their estates, wasted their fortunes in meeting the expenses of their undertaking. The crown got the estates if their was no direct heir.
Meanwhile nothing has ever been settled, the wars went back and forth and today Jerusalem, the mother of all the worlds predominant religions is still the hotbed of hatred and supposedly, according to scriptures, the place where the apocalypse will start.
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Believe in your beliefs. It's your individual call ordained by God and gifted to us with our freedoms. Unfortunately religion has changed its definition, it seems in the hands of some, it's the quest to get a closer seat (even front row) to the throne than the next guy. And the rules are more corrupt than the problems they solve.
Some folks don't settle for equality in this race. I cringe when those who profess their fundamentalist convictions, actually believe Gods law should take precedence over the law and order, as prescribed in the Constitution and the laws drafted from it.
That's why the Evangelical vote scares me. People should be elected on the basis of what’s good for the country, not their personal agendas. It's the reason gay rights, the abortion issue, and health reform will always be a problem and the mainstream suffers when they shouldn't because of the stonewalling. Subjects with no legal precedence are being argued in a legal court.
OATH OF OFFICE
Our politicians have to swear an oath to country first. Let’s keep the White house, just the way it is. Lets leave out the purple robes, gold plated urns, vessels and gold-painted pianos, weird pointed hats, incense, old languages, weird rituals and fear management. That’s for the PTL crew, the 700 Club and the other 24/7 send in your money channels. All that revenue is the same as that piece of cloth, a promise. But if all that revenue was directly put to good cause more would be helped directly than those who profess to be helping you with their E-tickets. Thats what another topic “False Prophets” is all about.
THE ABORTION ISSUE
You can't mix Religion and Politics without depriving someone else of their rights. Stand against abortion and you have deprived a woman of her inalienable right to choose her path. You are telling her no. It’s simply not your choice.
A law should never be created that denies the law for someone else. It’s a MORAL issue and MORAL issues are in the hands of the person involved and his or her spiritual and legal, family and friend advisors, not the government nor the politicians. Learn from the Crusades.
The biggest mistake in the history of our judicial system was the Rowe Vs. Wade decision. It was a compromise about as scientific and “fair” as it could get but it did not satisfy the anti-abortionists who want it all. It was not a Supreme Court decision that had to be made. "It was a moral issue that got out of hand well escalated by attorney fees and passion stirring by the religious right". It never should of been considered.
THE MARRIAGE ISSUE
Another act of interfering with personal beliefs and freedom as moral issues become religious issues. The simplest way of explaining the separation is to get those to “mind their own business” and not champion causes they have nothing to do with.
Defining marriage by gender is no ones business other than those involved. It's a choice they make. You don’t have to share their bed or their lives, thats your free choice. Mind your own business. The local, state and federal government has no business interfering. The only exception is if it harms or effects children, in any way, shape or form in a bad way and then the law has to get involved. Otherwise they have legal rights too.
RELIGION SEPARATES
By nature, it's separatist. The movement itself creates division. For each Evangelical that liked what they heard, a few others did not. Not Evangelical enough. So the Republican Party split into far Right Conservatism, Moderate Conservatism and Evangelicalism, which created the Non-Functionalism party. Like Churches, whats the flavor of the month. The right wing, the Republican party has blended faith just as the Crusades pitch, and God is on their side.
With front-page entertainment TV stars like Mike Huckabee, the intellectual teachings of Sara Palin, B-movie actors like Limbaugh and Beck fueling the fires for personal gain, the election, the future of this country was in jeopardy. Curiously, and wisely, it seems many Americans are afraid of too much Evangelicalism which leads us to persons of faith.