Why do the right wing fundies suddenly not believe in the separation...

[FormerRepublican]

...of church and state? That has never been challenged in the entire history of the US. So WTF is up with them? Could it be this:

"Religious expression. Conservative evangelicals want churches to be able to support political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, teacher-led prayer to be allowed in schools, and religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public places."

Link

They oh, so subtly, want to establish religion in the US, and it ain't YOUR or MY religion, is it?

[Eric J in MN]

1. Prayers led by teachers were allowed in public schools

for most of US history, and right-wingers have been trying to get them back in public schools since the Supreme Court banned that.

I'm a member of "Americans United for Separation of Church and State," but this isn't new.
www.au.org

[MadMaddie]

2. That's why the church tax-exempt status is going to have

to be reviewed when the Dems take Congress back...the abuses started with the * cabal establishing the faith based initive....it crossed the line and opened the door the abuses we are seeing now....what these churches have effectively done is ruined it for the other churches that aren't involved in politics....those churches should be up in arms...

[GrumpyGreg]

3. Hey,I had a Jesuit priest as Congressman. The Vatican ended

that,not the government.

[noahmijo]

4. What do you mean "suddently" they NEVER believed in it

In their minds this country is to be run by Radical Christian Calvinists just as it was back during the good ol Puritan days where you could burn a 16 year old girl
at the stake for having hiccups.

[NMMNG]

5. The only separation of Church and State they ever wanted

was the type that keeps the State out of their business, not them out of the State.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Sorry, but no ...

The idea of the separation of church and state has been challenged since the inception of what is now the United States, although the term "challenge" has a more broad meaning than we seem to be using here. That is, the idea, in and of itself, developed over time and was not established in meaning at the beginning of its use as a concept. It was not hard-coded into the American legal code (the phrase does not appear in the Constitution), yet is derived from the more concrete text of the 1st Amendment preventing the establishment of a state religion. What that means exactly could have gone in many directions. The theory that developed was that only by limiting organized religious influence in public affairs, i.e. maintaining the secular legally separate from the spiritual, could the non-establishment rule be maintained.

Ironically, devout Christians were at the forefront of this effort.

One of the first major battles over this idea after the US declared independence from England took place in 1784 when Patrick Henry proposed a measure that would have given public funding to Christian teachers. Nominally an education bill, the measure nonetheless spoke its actual purpose in its title, "A Bill for Establishing a Provision for the Teachers of the Christian Religion." His thought was that the public was aided by the furthering of religious principles, even if the government did not establish religion officially as a state doctrine. In no small part because of this idea, the nature of the battle over what constituted separation of church and state began to develop its boundaries.

Put simply, this is not new. We are simply at another point in the ongoing process of defining what separation of church and state means. The current thrust of some Christian denominations is primarily a reactionary response to the the more liberal reforms of the last three decades.

[Yupster]

7. The difference is in definitions

They believe in the separation of church and state too.

They believe it means the state should not have an estanblished religion. For instance, no state should be allowed to say you must be Roman Catholic to live here.

As far as prayer in school, the bible in the classoom, no they have never believed in being against that. When I went to elementary school we had a prayer every day with our snack.

So they haven't changed, other than getting more organized.

[AtomicKitten]

8. You gotta pay (taxes) to shove politics down your churchgoer's throats

It's still the law (watch this space).