Separation of Church and State

“The morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.”—James Madison 

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles."--John Adams

"The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."—George Washington

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.” ― Thomas Paine

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people (the First Amendment) which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”—Thomas Jefferson
_______________________________________________________________________________

There are plenty more such quotes, but they won’t impress anyone determined to believe that separation of church and state is defended only by a small vocal group.  Most people haven’t noticed how many believers in God, including a surprising number of Christians are for the absolute separation of church and state.  Baptists have been among the most stalwart supporters, and it was in their defense that Jefferson created his now famous “wall of separation” analogy, in 1802, expounding on the meaning of the First Amendment.

John Leland, a Baptist minister from Massachusetts, supported Madison against Patrick Henry’s attempt to establish state support for religion in Virginia.  Leland said, “If all the souls in a government were saints of God, (and) should they be formed into a society by law, that society could not be a Gospel Church, but a creature of state."  That Baptist position survives to this day in the American Baptist Convention, which resolved in 1963, and reiterated in 1983 and 1993, “that separation of church and state is central to our American heritage; that it has made possible a measure of freedom not previously achieved under any other system; that it is indispensable to our national policy of equal rights for all [religions], and special privileges for no religion.”  Freewill Baptists, American/Northern Baptists, Bible Baptists, General Baptists, National Baptists, Primitive Baptists as well as Methodists hold similar positions.

Where then does the virulent and vocal opposition to the mere mention of separation of church and state come from?  From the Southern Baptists, who split from their brethren in 1845 in order to defend the biblical sanctity of slavery.  They are now the dominant evangelical leaders opposing separation of church and state, even though in 1963 their Baptist Faith and Message said:  “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it.  Church and state should be separate.”

It wasn’t until 1995 that the Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn its historic support for slavery and failure to confront racism in the South.

Adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance seems like such a small thing, but it is the seed of what can become a dangerous violation of  the separation principle.  And what is the motivation behind it but an attempt at indoctrination, after all.  President Eisenhower, when signing the bill to add it to the Pledge (and also "In God We Trust" to paper money, making it the country's second moto with E Pluribus Unum), said, "From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. ... In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource, in peace or in war."

Spiritual weapon indeed.

The Holy of Holies

“The Truth is clever. The minute we create an idol for it, it becomes a lie.” -TPT



Is rule by fear as used by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Hussein or Taliban/Iranian theocracies et al. any different than that of the Biblical Jehovah, held by dogma to be an object of fear? Are we not taught by biblical scripture to fear God?

In I Samuel 8—“God” begrudgingly accedes to the selection of a king to reign over Israel. Why did the Israelites desire a king against "God’s wishes" for continued rule via the priests, prophets and judges with Saul as “God’s” spokesman? Because the theocratic priesthood used the name of God to justify their corruption. Samuel warned the people of the power of a king but didn’t mention that corruption would be just as much of a problem with a king as it had been with the priests and judges. The people didn’t disagree with Samuel’s warnings, so we are left to conclude that the corruption of their theocracy was worse than the picture he painted of life under a king.

History’s most successful and revered leaders lead through respect earned by demonstration of ability and integrity, not fear.
The temple in Jerusalem was designed to represent the source of fear and awe the theocracy wished to project, but it’s Holy of Holies was as empty of Truth as are all such shams created to validate the power of its custodians. It was itself an idol, and as with all idols, a lie; the great temple, adorned with flowing sacrificial blood, was constructed to shelter fear in a barren room to perpetuate and reinforce a lie. A building is a building unless it is said to be holier than the rocks and stones around it. Then it becomes an idol.  You can’t enshrine Truth in a temple or behind an altar--only in our minds and hearts.

Truth itself is the Holy of Holies, the universe its temple and the souls who seek it are its apostles.

Is Sex Unholy?

On what basis can sex be considered unholy while claiming that contraception is unholy as well. Who decides that birth control stops at conception? If not, then when does abortion become evil?

Look to the extremes. Is "aborting" a one cell zygote when the mother is pregnant as a result of being raped by her father, immoral?  Is partial-birth abortion of a healthy baby in the process of being born anything but murder?  Abortion is the most difficult moral issue we face because it involves the rights of the mother, and the question of when an embryo acquires its rights.  

Those who say human rights begin at conception based on divine revelation will be as intransigent in that belief as on all their other beliefs based purely on blind faith in the infallibility of scripture that is fraught with contradictions.  So too those who say an embryo gains it's rights somehow instantly once outside the womb, are just as tied to their blind faith of convenience as those to religious revelation.  "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice" are simplistic labels which are as evil in their simplicity as the immorality they claim to oppose.

There are no simple answers to the issue any more than sex can be reduced to being simple holiness or Original Sin.

What should be "fair"?.

Can life be made to be fair?  If so how should we go about achieving it?  Who decides what's fair, one person, a committee, a majority?  Would that be fair for all those who aren't that one person, or weren't on that committee or in that majority?  

We aren't all created equal.  Some have greater intelligence, creativity, physical prowess, leadership ability or health than others.  How can we make that fair, by punishing the superior ones and bringing them down to the level of the most inferior ones? 

There is only one thing that can and should be made equal or fair, the moral right of all adults to their life, liberty and property

Afterlife?

The idea of an afterlife in Abrahamic religions does not go back as far in history as popularly supposed.  The first indication of a belief in the idea occurs in 2 Maccabees, about the revolt against the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes, who conquered Jerusalem in 167 BCE and proceeded to start killing all Jews who wouldn't stop practicing their religion and participate in his Hellenistic, pagan religion.  The revolt against his reign was led by Judas Maccabeus who ousted the Seleucids from Jerusalem and the Temple in 164 BCE, (which is still celebrated by Jews as the Festival of Chanukah).

The pertinent passage, 2 Maccabees 7:9 (written c. 124 BCE), concerns a woman who is forced to watch as her 7 sons are tortured and killed for refusing to eat pork.  Before she is martyred herself, she says, "the King of the universe will rise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws".  That idea expressed here comes well after the codification of Judaic canon.

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees and Essenes generally believed in an afterlife, but the Sadducees, the priestly class and Roman collaborators, did not.  The above Maccabean passage sheds some light on why that was likely the case.  People who believed in a reward in the afterlife would be more likely to risk revolt even to death.  Add to that fact that revolt against Antiochus was still relatively fresh in the minds of Jews in Jesus' time, prompting them to be looking for a Maccabean like leader/messiah to oust the Romans and their lackey priesthood and royalty.  Jesus, as the Son of David with his Kingdom of Heaven drew on those powerful associations.

The attitude prior to the hope and belief expressed by the woman in the passage above, is best put by Job's question, "Can the dead live again?"--Job 14:14  Job was written/compiled probably no later than 200 years before 2 Maccabees.

Certainly the exposure of Judaism to the wide cosmopolitan array of religions and cults that accompanied the Roman conquest, had a growing influence on a belief in an afterlife.  The cults of Isis, Dionysus and Mithras, with their resurrected savior-man-gods, communion like rituals and everlasting life (not to mention the sexual exploitation) were tempting even for Jews, particularly outside of Judea.  Paul almost certainly buckled to the pressure to co-opt the popular aspect of these cults and their associated mystery religions.  It makes one wonder if the possibilities of such modification to the Jesus movement wasn't the actual substance of his epiphany on the road to Damascus.

Is there an answer to the possibility of an afterlife?  From the perspective of this blog, assuming a laissez faire God, no--at least not a divinely revealed one.  But reference my article,  The Ethernatural, for a credible suggestion concerning the possible basis for a theory of an afterlife.

Did Jesus Fail?

 Mark 11 (RSV):

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 
13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 
14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 
16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 
17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

(Then seeing the withered fig tree the next day)

23 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.

_________________________________________________________________
Did Jesus fail?  Did Jesus cleanse the Temple like Joshua fought the battle of Jericho--as the leader. If he single-handedly caused all that chaos, the merchants would have stopped him themselves, much less the Temple guards who were there for that purpose. He had to have been leading a significant band of followers, some (like Peter) who were armed.

Not only did he lead this operation, but he embargoed the trade in sacrificial animal merchandise for the rest of the day, an impossible feat for one man. The point? His faith did not move the mountain--God didn't show up as he expected Him to do once the Temple was cleansed. The passage about moving mountains by faith immediately follows this, but most likely preceded it originally, just as the passage about cursing the fruitless fig tree (a symbol for his fruitless mission) originally followed it.

Perhaps the chief priests feared Jesus somewhat because of his influence with the people, but more so because the people were very large in number and armed. The irony is that the people probably started to disperse at the end of the day after Jesus failure, some even becoming some of those calling for his death because of it.

In any case, Jesus was crucified, the Roman punishment for insurrection, not for theft, so the other two that were crucified with Jesus were likely two of his followers, not thieves.

Verse 23 appears to be Jesus encouraging or preaching to himself, trying to assuage his doubt.  John the Baptizer's execution had shaken his faith to the core.  It appears he believed  the fruitless fig tree to be a bad omen.  And then, above all, God did not re-inhabited the Temple following its cleansing.  For us, it's just more evidence that God (if He exists) does not intervene, ever, for ANY reason--but Jesus' unreasoned faith kept him from recognizing that evident fact.  The ultimate point is, Jesus believed in revelation, divine intervention and the power of faith, but he was killed anyway, leading to his cry from the cross asking why God had abandoned him.

Yet Jesus' faith was enough to kill the fig tree?  That smacks more of coincidence or latter day editing, exchanging the curse passage with the passage on faith as suggested above.

Did God abandon him?  No. God's prime directive remains the protection of our free will, free from irrational, supernatural exceptions to the natural law that governs our rational universe.

What is The Meaning of Life?

It's become almost a cliche to ridicule the question.  How can we know why we're here if we're not given any reason, purpose or meaning whatsoever?  The only guides that claim to be a book of instructions for living are the self-titled "Holy" Scriptures that are loaded with contradictions and falsehoods, and interspersed with occasional bits of wisdom or evil.  What can we make of the apparent fact that the only Word of God is the ever present natural law staring us in the face, insisting that we take it from there.  It finally becomes obvious that determining the meaning, if there is to be any,  is up to us, which is both exhilarating and terrifying.

Insight often comes from insignificant and unexpected places.  In a current movie preview, a character asks a question that is so above the rest of the subject matter it almost jumps off the screen, "What are you gonna do with this one and only life you've got?"  Profundity in a nutshell.  Since we have free will, therefore we're not going to be told what to do, it's up to us to decide, and it looks like we have three general choices.

The first answer, and probably the most common, is Nothing.  But is it really nothing.  In the old movie, The Magnificent Seven, Charles Bronson's character scolds a child for idolizing him as a hero because he's a gunfighter.  He tells the child that his parents are more courageous than he is because they assume the weight of the responsibility for their family; something he doesn't have the will to do.  Courage comes a lot easier if we don't care.  The only way to truly do nothing is to hide you light under a bushel chasing trivialities.  The true do-nothings refuse to pull their own weight, which often becomes considerable, sitting in front of the boob tube watching programs that offer no substance or challenge, simply making them comfortably numb.  These types may be less plentiful than we tend to think.  We can only hope.

The other two choices are polar opposites, doing good or evil; pursuing the Truth via knowledge, justice, love and beauty, or violating the rights of others for your own advancement, or worse, just because it feels good.  At first blush it appears simple, but we tend to oversimplify good and evil by making them a function of love and nothing else.  Is that correct?  Isn't it prejudicial to assume that we all have the same capacity for love, and if we don't, that those who have a low capacity are doomed?  But meaning, the pursuit of Truth, is up to the individual to determine according to one's abilities, drives and desires.  Charles Bronson in the example above, did well to point out the moral and virtuous behavior of the child's responsible parents, but he is contributing as well, doing what he is good at in the pursuit of Truth via justice.  No one can do it all, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up for it when we can't.  Our job, what gives us meaning, is to find what we can do, and then do it.

Value yourself and do what your good at while honoring the rights of others and their righteousness in doing the same.  Look forward to each day ahead, knowing you are worthy, you can contribute and you can enjoy yourself doing it. You can be no more generous to others than you are generous to yourself.