What happens when there's no separation between church and state

[rug]

By Ron Grossman
March 21, 2012

Anyone tempted by Rick Santorum's proposal to knock a hole in the wall between church and state ought to consider the old maxim: "Be careful what you wish for — you might get it."

On the GOP presidential campaign trail, the former senator from Pennsylvania excoriates those who think the First Amendment means what it says — that government should keep its hands off matters of faith. "The president has reached a new low in this country's history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before," Santorum has said, a verdict that seemingly resonated with voters in Mississippi and Alabama, where he won the Republican primaries.

But Santorum has it topsy-turvy: Separation of church and state isn't the enemy of freedom of religion, but its best guarantee, and you don't have to take my word for it. Millions of Europeans rendered that judgment with their feet, leaving Old World homelands with established churches for this country's religious diversity. Almost nobody went the other way.

Pilgrims we honor on Thanksgiving were "non-conformists," in 17th century jargon. They were dissidents who refused to fall in line behind their monarch's theology. So, too, were the Quakers and the Poles, who flocked to the U.S. to escape 19th century German overlords determined to wean them from their Catholic faith.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0321-religion-20120321,0,4949641.story

[ejpoeta]

1. i agree. it's not freedom of YOUR religion... it's the freedom

of everyone to believe or not believe what they want. And it's not an attack on your religion to protect everyone else's beliefs too. It really makes me mad when these guys try to say their rights are being trampled on when they are trampling everyone else. Trying to impose their religion on the rest of us. How is that different than what the Taliban does?

[trotsky]

2. Mixed feelings to see someone argue for a good idea with bad facts.

The primary reason for Europeans to come to America was economic, not religious. The chance at land ownership was one of the biggest draws.

In addition, it would be more accurate to say the "pilgrims we honor on Thanksgiving" fled not because they were persecuted in England but because they weren't allowed to force their prudish theology on the rest of the country.

[Goblinmonger]

4. Just what I was going to post. Let's not romanticize the Pilgrims.

They brought us the Salem Witch Trials lest we forget.

[FarCenter]

3. State churches have worked out well in Europe -- no one attends anymore.

While the churches are still supported by taxes, e.g. in Sweden, church attendance is at all time lows. They are mostly regarded as historic, cultural, and sentimental institutions.

[Science Trumps All]

5. The American ayatollahs...

...won't be satisfied until there's an official American religion. Fortunately, groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union serve as watchdogs against what Santorum and his kind are doing to subvert the Constitution.

http://ffrf.org/news/releases/isnt-this-what-theocracy-looks-like/

What the Catholic Santorum conveniently ignores is that it was his Latin fraternity that sued in Wisconsin to remove a prevailing anti-Catholic environment and make them secular. Feeling some political clout, the old archbishops now want to make themselves the arbiter of religious propriety in our public schools. Oops...there's a short-term memory problem among the black-robed spooks.

My preference is to just tax the hell out of all religious cliques. The property taxes in my county would be slashed by half if all church real estate (and disguised commercial ventures) were assessed at the rate of their secular neighbors.

[LeftishBrit]

6. There are places that technically come into that category, which are far more secular than America

E.g. in the UK only 12% of people even attend church regularly.

But in the case of what Santorum means, a government controlled and maintained by religious laws, then indeed it means harshness to people of the wrong faith - ranging from persecutions and executions, to exclusion from political office. E.g. at least until very recently, the lack of a church-state boundary in the UK did not make it impossible for the irreligious to become Prime Ministers, but did make it impossible for openly practicing Catholics to do so.