Sunday, April 24, 2005

On Separation of Church and State

I realised that the US was truly a Christian country when I was 15 and my family moved from an urban ethnic ghetto to the suburbs. My urban ethnic ghetto was West LA where almost everyone I knew was Jewish, and the suburbs were Orange County, which was the most shockingly white-bread place I had ever been in my life.

More recently I was teaching at the Czech military university in Vyškov where we had a guest speaker, Charles Moss Duke, Jr, an Apollo astronaut and one of only twelve people to have walked on the moon. He was an interesting speaker, as you would imagine, until he finished talking about space travel and started talking about Jesus.

The Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe according to how people report their religion in the national census. I love the fact that there is no religion in daily life here. No one preaches to you or tries to tell you how to live, and you can be as irreverent as you want and no one gets offended.

I have just read the first two instalments of an article by Steve Weissman on www.truthout.org entitled “America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives?” Weissman reminds us of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and that the founding fathers of our country intended to keep religion out of government.

“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” -- Treaty of Tripoli, signed on June 10, 1797, by President John Adams

Weissman goes on to write about General Boykin, known as the “Christian General” who has claimed that his god is bigger than Islam’s and that we are fighting “in the name of Jesus”; and David Barton, the leading spin artist for Christian nationalism, who uses revisionist history to try and prove “that America once was and should again become a Christian nation.”

I really do not care what religion people are or to what degree. I just want them all to keep their religion out of my government, and stop trying to use the name of one god or another to take away my freedom.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fume on these points of discussion with people, munkie can attest to that. I [being of the persuasion that was snubbed by being the downfall of this 'great' country] these fuckers want this whole place to themselves, as edited and clean as the inside of a MacDonald’s big Mac container. And once they've got it all these little vices will slowly creep back in. Who in the hell are they trying to fool, with the love of jesus it will only be themselves.
k

Monkey's Max said...

Knotty, after I heard that Jesus-in-Space guy speak, I barfed in the sink in my office. That was my last day at the university.