Separation of Church and State

[BOSSHOG]

This issue has to be pushed to the forefront. The future of our country depends on it. The south (where I live) tried to destroy the country before and it is again. The ignorant white trash believers who dispel evidence and obviously have a problem with their sexuality and think religious intolerance is all the rage are set to use their pulpits to guide America. Anyone see anything wrong with that? Liberals should not reach out to the red states, we should educate them. Once again, conservatives are their own worse enemies. They pick and choose which parts of the constitution suit their religious beliefs. They use it as a weapon. For God's Sakes people, its not time for healing, its time for fighting. Our greatest weapon, communications.

[Wright Patman]

1. To communicate with someone

the other party has to be listening. The people you describe do not view you and me as human. It is all they can do to keep from filling us full of lead.

People using the reptilian portion of their brains are easily programmed by the Karl Roves of the world. It is deliberate and very effective. Rove is a sort of evil genius in that sense.

Has anyone else noticed the contiguous map of states now sharing political ideology with Canada. If both sides were willing to discuss it peaceably, the states in the West and North could apply for admission to Canada.

This would solve a lot of the acrimony. It would leave me in fascist "Jesusland" as the map mockingly called the 33 or so states left in the U.S., but so be it. There would be a dramatic decline in time-wasting emotional debates appealing to the reptile brain on insoluble "culture wars" issues. The "culture wars" are why I lost interests in politics. I think of politics as being concerned with bread-and-butter issues. Most in Texas and the South do not anymore. It's all about "taking back America" from the heathen.

Of course, people suggested the same thing 150 years ago, but one side was not willing to let the other go. I cannot understand why it is okay for the Soviet Union to be disassembled overnight, but not the United States. But it's not. So we would just have a Civil War redux with "Lincoln" being played by GWBush who would kill however many millions it took to "preserve the Union." One upside is that we wouldn't be hearing any more about Iraq or any other foreign adventure for a while.

[BOSSHOG]

3. I failed in my attempt to communicate

My post had at least one mixed message. I believe we should communicate with each other and in large numbers to our elected representatives; thus our greatest weapon. I have found here in South Mississippi that raising ones voice and flailing about the destruction of the constitution does get attention. If you get a conservative one on one he is easily disarmed when the discussion is steered from beliefs to facts.

Would not gwb be Jefferson Davis?

[Wright Patman]

8. No, because GWBush

would be the one using military means a la Lincoln to hold together a union at the point of a gun.

The seceding north and west would be the ones playing the Jefferson Davis role.

However, a new twist would be that the seceding states would be joining an already-established multinational state based in Ottawa.

[ktowntennesseedem]

4. Great idea!

I plan to stay and fight, but if it gets to be more that I can handle, I wouldn't have to move so far north if Canada annexed the blue states!

[ktowntennesseedem]

2. We need to heal, but we can best do that by fighting!

I'm a strong Church/State separatist, proud of my Baptist roots for their historical stand on this bedrock principle. But here in the South (East Tennessee), Baptists are just one more wing of the Evangelical majority that try to ram their extremist beliefs down everyone's throat! Makes me sick to always have to qualify my beliefs when I tell someone I'm a Baptist; takes half-a-day to get past the stereotypes that name conjures up these days!

I've been fighting on that front for several years now, and its the only way I can keep my sanity and beliefs intact. Defeated, brokenhearted Dems need to pull together and heal, but to me that just means we stand together and fight with more determination and energy, not less.

Keep fighting! Its the best medicine I can think of!

[BOSSHOG]

5. Welcome to DU

I am one who reinforces that stereotype, but I do so with a purpose. Many of my acquaintances say they are conservative but the republican party does not represent them. They feel stereotyped. However, it was the vast majority of people identifying themselves as conservative who voted for the alleged conservative candidate. If genuine conservatives feel so passionately about their party then I strongly urge them to rise up and take it back. If Baptists don't want to be stereotyped as constitution hating, ignorant white trash scum (my words) who blindly take their marching orders from the pulpit and who think the constitution is a weapon to be used against segments of society they hate, then Baptists should stop doing that and revisit the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state and continue to enjoy their tax exempt status. I apologize for the harshness of this tone for it certainly is not personal. From your post you are definitely an ally who thinks its wrong to force one's religious beliefs on the populace via governmental intervention. Great idea, pass the word.

[ktowntennesseedem]

10. Thanks for the reply, BOSSHOG!

Hit the nail on the head about the alleged conservative candidate. The Chimp has duped a lot of people, but none more that evangelicals.

Growing up Baptist in the south means growing up Southern Baptist. But a funny thing happened: just as I was learning to appreciate my Baptist heritage and principles such as the separation of C & S, my Baptist family was rushing to abandon those bedrock beliefs in favor of very non-Baptist ideals such as intolerance and exclusiveness. I stayed and fought for a while, but there came a point where I retreated and found other ways, with other like-minded Baptists, to live out my faith apart from all the fighting. The stereotype has changed for the worse; I have grown, and changed for the better. So the best way I avoid that negative stereotype is to avoid the label and simply live out my faith, letting my actions describe who I am and what I stand for. Actions do speak louder than words, and faith without works is dead.

[izzie]

6. Tell you something. They are here in the North also

I changed my home town and went to a new church but same kind. The new one was very odd. I was in a class where one man just took over and said this is how things will be. The women all went with him and the peaching is all this fundamentalist stuff. I just did not stay. It just was not the old NE church I had grow up in and came from.. By the way the church was filled every Sunday and they had set up a school for kids. This man even told us what books we should read.

[BOSSHOG]

7. That is what America is all about

but you can't force your religion on the populace via laws. You have the right to attend or not attend, or leave halfway through. Heaven forbid the day when those rights disappear and you are dictated to sit and listen and read AS TOLD.

[ktowntennesseedem]

12. The problem I see is that so many want to be told what to believe

Many are just too lazy to think for themselves, and will follow any strong personality who seems to know what they're talking about. That's why that church has grown so big; it's so much easier when you can have the answers to all your life-questions handed to you on a silver-platter than having to read and learn and pray and discern matters of faith for yourself.

Thank God for the freedoms we still have, including the freedom to go to such a church, and the freedom to walk out.

[Getchasome]

9. Thus will scare the shit out of ya..

To understand how the Christian right worldview is shaping and even fueling congressional anti-environmentalism, consider two influential born-again lawmakers: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

DeLay, who has considerable control over the agenda in the House, has called for "march forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, reports Peter Perl in The Washington Post Magazine. DeLay wants to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values.

Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Speaking at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory rally just before the GOP sweep of the 2002 midterm elections, he promised the faithful, "When we win this revolution in November, you'll be doing the Lord's work, and He will richly bless you for it!"

Neither DeLay nor Inhofe include environmental protection in "the Lord's work." Both have ranted against the EPA, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has fought to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. Last year, Inhofe invited a stacked-deck of fossil fuel-funded climate-change skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Read the whole article http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/

[Anakin Skywalker]

11. No healing is possible...

..when one side (in this case, the rethug) is extremely pigheaded! These fundies do not think or weigh things out, they just believe and act on what they are told by "greater power" or whatever hallucinations they see and hear. Their Chosen One Shrub is the epitome of this. From what I see and hear out of him via his TV speeches, etc. he apparently received his "mandate" to invade iraq and spread democrazy throughout the mid-east from a higher power. He did not bother to examine the consequences (such as how it would affect other peoples, etc.). This is just one example of the rightwing mindset that causes me to see there is no hope in reaching any compromise with them. Their self-assured smugness is very troubling. And I think that if you extend your hand to them in friendship, the more rabid ones will actually see it as a weakness and a greenlight to push you around.

[pipes]

13. My Daughter was taught a prayer at Public School In WI

She said that her Principal says a prayer on special days before lunch? WTF? I have never taught her to say prayers before eating.

I would like to raise hell but I would hate for my 7 year old daughter to be labled a heathen or something...

What can I do?

this is the prayer:
Thank you god for the food we eat...
Thank you god for the birds we see...
Thank you god for everything...
-AMEN