Separation of Church and State

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Registered: 04-16-2003
Separation of Church and State
21
Fri, 08-06-2004 - 5:15pm
I can't remember where, but this was an issue buried in another thread. This is an interesting article that appeared in the Seattle Times yesterday. The assistant professor makes some interesting points.

Published on Thursday, August 5, 2004 by the Seattle Times

Mixing Church and State can Damage Both

by James Wellman



A week into the U.S. war in Iraq, I walked by a Baptist church covered in pro-war placards, one of which proclaimed: "Jesus, The Supreme Commander." That sign unintentionally summed up the actual situation: Never before in our nation's modern history has the White House so thoroughly mixed politics and religion.

President Bush does this by proposing that social problems can be ameliorated most efficiently through organizations that are faith-based. And that America's task in the world is to spread freedom because liberty "is God's gift to humanity."

In both cases, the rationale for action is God and faith. Why is this a problem? It poses serious risks not only for democracy and sound policy, but for the very religious groups that tend to be the most enthusiastic audience.

One of the remarkable cultural facts of the 20th century is that American evangelicals won the religious competition. We now know that one-third of adult Americans — more than 50 million — claim a born-again status. Nearly a majority of American Christians can be broadly called evangelical.

But what is more remarkable is that more than three out of every four white evangelicals voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. As has been widely reported, Bush political counselor Karl Rove thinks that Bush can win the White House in 2004 with white evangelicals alone. They are the new Protestant establishment. Their religion is the new American civil religion.

So why might Bush's policies, in the long run, be counter to their interests? The starkest reason is that Bush has subtly made his faith (a Christian evangelical Methodism) the center of his domestic and foreign decisions. And the relation of religion and the state has a bloody history. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then mixing religion in merely glorifies this corruption.

Is it possible to name one empire or government which, partnered with religion, did not end by using religion to rationalize human suffering or human-rights abuses? One simply needs to think of the Mesopotamians, the Christian Crusades, and various Islamic regimes. Also, observe state Buddhism in medieval and early modern China and Japan.

The partnership of religion and the state is an equation for tragedy not just for enemies of the state but for the religion that is the state's partner.

Domestically, when the federal government funds religious organizations to do social service, they become arms of the state. They give up their independence and compromise their ability to fulfill their specific charitable missions.

When foreign actions are sanctioned, however subtly, on the dubious idea that a liberal democracy is a gift from God and that somehow the United States should be an instrument of that gift, where will our gift-giving end? Who will end it? Religion says that God is in charge; democracies say that the people rule. Who will adjudicate this debate?

Bush proclaimed after 9/11 that it is the U.S.'s calling, led by his sense of moral leadership, to rid the world of evil. How can we decide who and what is evil? Moreover, what makes us think that we can rid the world of evil? This injection of black-white thinking into the international sphere has created more enemies than it has overcome and alienated friends as well.

Again, where does Bush get his calling? It seems he gains it from his own prophetic sense of authority. This kind of religious charisma trumps normal political debate and veers toward the very mixture of state and religious power our Founding Fathers tried to prevent.

Many evangelicals outside the country have expressed concern at the arrogance of the U.S. role in the world; neither do they believe that it is helpful to their Christian cause. Even U.S. international missionaries feel that their cause and their safety are compromised by the melding of religion and politics in Bush's foreign policy.

There is no doubt that Bush's rhetoric of fighting evil and of overcoming evildoers with democracy and freedom is a potent rhetorical brew that appeals to the central cords of evangelical theology. Nonetheless, evangelicals should refuse to be co-opted by Bush and his team. For their Lord said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

When religious people begin to believe that they are the kingdom, this is the beginning of the end.

James Wellman is an assistant professor of comparative religion at the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0805-08.htm



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Registered: 04-16-2003
Wed, 08-18-2004 - 6:41pm
<>

I will refer you back to Krugman's article--no ones believes he would have the gall to be so radical. These are executive orders--what can be done?

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 08-19-2004 - 1:48pm
I 'borrowed' this article from the PT board. We've cover this subject before but this is an update.
Clerics resist Bush strategy to seek aid of churchgoers


A 22-point plan by the Bush-Cheney campaign to marshal support from churchgoers has met resistance from some religious leaders.



http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/9181348.htm


As the Bush-Cheney campaign mounts an offensive to solidify a religious base for the November election, the Episcopal bishop of Southeast Florida has joined a chorus of religious leaders denouncing the campaign's plan to obtain church directories for electioneering purposes.


To Bishop Leo Frade, the Bush-Cheney strategy violates the separation of church and state.


''Handing over names for partisan politics to any party would be an infraction of our tax-exempt status as a religious institution,'' said Frade, who heads 82 Episcopal churches in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Martin counties.


Frade, who was born in Cuba and came to the United States in 1960 as a college student, went further in a July 2 diocesan letter.


''I'm alarmed by any suggestion of providing the names of church members to any particular political group,'' he wrote. ``I saw this request made by Fidel Castro at the beginning of his regime, and his persecution of churches that refused.''


Frade's warning echoes other religious leaders who have decried the campaign's detailed 22-step program, outlined in a document given to thousands of campaign volunteers across the country. The memo lists 22 duties for ''coalition coordinators,'' including:


 


Photobucket&nbs

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Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 6:22am

This sums it up for me.


Elaine

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 10:12am

Now, sadly,

 


Photobucket&nbs

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 10:23am
Thanks for posting this...Who would have thought that after forty years this would still be an issue in our country....I just laugh when people say there is no such thing as "Separation of Church and State", that it never was a true issue in this Country . I have read that plenty of times on the PT board.
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Registered: 04-16-2003
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 2:26pm
<>

The problem with bush is that he doesn't get nuance, i.e., he can't distinguish a difference between religion and state. He has made most changes by executive order with little opposition. I am always amazed at his disregard for the US Constitution.


Edited 8/20/2004 2:45 pm ET ET by hayashig

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Registered: 04-16-2003
Fri, 08-20-2004 - 2:35pm
<>

The sad part is they really believe this. I am just floored that something that has been widely accepted as "fact" for two centuries can be turned on its head to such an extent that people refuse to believe the historic interpretation. I know the Christians believe Bush is right, but what if the president were Muslim? Don't they understand that the Constitution is our protection?


Edited 8/20/2004 2:50 pm ET ET by hayashig

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Registered: 03-23-2003
Sun, 08-22-2004 - 12:18pm

An interesting op-ed piece on this subject.


SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/187081_focusbush22.html

P-I Focus: Bush weds religion, politics to form world view


Sunday, August 22, 2004


DAVID DOMKE


American presidents beginning with George Washington have included religious language in their public addresses. Claims of the United States as a divinely chosen nation and requests for God to bless U.S. decisions and actions have been commonplace. Scholars have labeled such discourse "civil religion," in which political leaders emphasize religious symbols and transcendent principles to engender a sense of unity and shared national identity.


George W. Bush is doing something altogether different.


Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the president and his administration have converged a religious fundamentalist worldview with a political agenda -- a distinctly partisan one, wrapped in the mantle of national interest but crafted by and for only those who share their outlook. It is a modern form of political fundamentalism -- that is, the adaptation of a self-proclaimed conservative Christian rectitude, by way of strategic language choices and communication approaches designed for a mass-media culture, into political policy.


Motivated by this ideology, the Bush administration has sought to control public discourse and to engender a climate of nationalism in which the public views presidential support as a patriotic duty and Congress (and the United Nations) is compelled to rubber-stamp administration policies.


The goal is a national mood of spiritual superiority under the guise of a just sovereignty. The ultimate irony is that in combating the Islamic extremists responsible for Sept. 11, the administration has crafted, pursued and engendered its own brand of political fundamentalism -- one that, while clearly tailored to a modern democracy, nonetheless functions ideologically in a manner similar to the version offered by the terrorists.


All of this has a facade of merely politics as usual. It is not. Unfortunately, as too often occurs with matters of religion, the mainstream news media have missed the story almost entirely, and thus so has much of the U.S. public.


Bush is the most publicly religious president since at least Woodrow Wilson. Ronald Reagan had great appeal to religious conservatives, but he was far less outspoken about religion -- a point noted in a June eulogy of the late president by Ron Reagan, who said his father did not "(wear) his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage," a comment many interpreted as a critique of the current president. Indeed, Bush speaks often about his "born-again" faith and regularly references a divine power in public statements, a practice that religion scholar Martin E. Marty has termed "God talk."


That the president -- any president -- is a person of religious faith is generally viewed by the U.S. public in favorable terms, the better to be grounded when facing momentous decisions. I share this view because I know how central the Christian faith is to my life and to many others I know and respect. Invocations of a higher power, when emphasizing inclusive and transcendent principles, seem to me to be legitimate and adroit rhetoric for a leader of 290 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom believe in God in some form. What is deeply troubling about Bush's religiosity, however, is that he consistently evinces a certainty that he knows God's will -- and he then acts upon this certainty in ways that affect billions of humans.


For example, in his address before Congress and a national television audience nine days after the terrorist attacks, Bush declared: "The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." Similarly, in the 2003 State of the Union address, with the conflict in Iraq imminent, he declared: "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." These are not requests for divine favor; they are declarations of divine wishes.


From this position, only short theological and rhetorical steps are required to justify U.S. actions. For instance, at a December 2003 news conference, Bush said: "I believe, firmly believe -- and you've heard me say this a lot, and I say it a lot because I truly believe it -- that freedom is the Almighty God's gift to every person, every man and woman who lives in this world. That's what I believe. And the arrest of Saddam Hussein changed the equation in Iraq. Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq."


Further, this view of divinely ordained policy infuses the public discourse of several administration leaders, irrespective of their particular religious outlook. I systematically examined hundreds of administration public communications -- by the president, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld -- about the "war on terrorism" in the 20 months between Sept. 11, 2001, and the end of "major combat" in Iraq in spring 2003. This research showed that the administration's public communications contained four characteristics simultaneously rooted in religious fundamentalism while offering political capital:



  • Simplistic, black-and-white conceptions of the political landscape, most notably good vs. evil and security vs. peril.



  • Calls for immediate action on administration policies as a necessary part of the nation's "calling" and "mission" against terrorism.



  • Declarations about the will of God for America and for the spread of U.S. conceptions of freedom and liberty.



  • Claims that dissent from the administration is unpatriotic and a threat to the nation and globe.


    In combination, these characteristics have transformed Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" policy to "Either you are with us, or you are against God." To the great misfortune of American democracy and the global public, such a view looks, sounds and feels remarkably similar to that of the terrorists it is fighting.


    Indeed, one is hard-pressed to see how the perspective of Osama bin Laden, that he and his followers are delivering God's wishes for the United States (and others who share Western customs and policies), is much different from the perspective of George W. Bush, that the United States is delivering God's wishes to the Taliban or Iraq. Clearly, flying airplanes into buildings in order to kill innocent people is an indefensible, immoral activity. So, too, some traditional allies told the Bush administration, is an unprovoked pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation. In both instances, the aggression manifested in a form that was available to the leaders. Fundamentalism in the White House is a difference in degree, not kind, from fundamentalism exercised in dark, damp caves. Democracy is always the loser.


    The ascendancy of the administration's political fundamentalism after Sept. 11 was facilitated by mainstream U.S. news coverage, which substantially echoed the administration's views. That became apparent when I analyzed how 20 leading and geographically diverse newspapers and the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC covered each of Bush's national addresses (15 in 20 months, a remarkable pace) and the administration's push for key "war on terrorism" policies and goals in 2001 and 2002, including passage of the USA Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and congressional and U.N. resolutions regarding Iraq.


    This analysis revealed that news media consistently amplified the words and ideas of the president and other administration leaders. They did that by echoing throughout their coverage similar claims made by multiple administration members, thereby having the administration's perspectives establish the terms of public discourse. For example, only two of more than 300 editorials that I analyzed in response to the president's national addresses criticized the administration's description of the campaign against terrorism as an epic struggle of good vs. evil. None questioned his explicit declarations of God's will. With so many around the globe expressing a different view during these 20 months, by echoing these fundamentalist messages within these editorials, the press failed its readers.


    To be clear, the U.S. news media did not emphasize the administration's messages to the same extent as the White House did during this time. Such an equation would imply that the commercial, independent news media merely served as mouthpieces, and that is not the case. Disagreement with the administration sometimes appeared in news stories--either as a presentation of different factual information or of divergent observations by other sources -- and in newspaper editorials. Coverage also included occasional strong criticisms of government policy, in particular in regard to the administration's diplomatic difficulties in early 2003.


    The chief failure of members of the mainstream media, though, is that they did not adequately cover the deeply religious motivations to the administration's actions and, as a result, too rarely questioned the administration's religious-cum-political discourses. Once these fundamentalist discourses became consistently amplified -- but not analyzed -- in leading media outlets, the administration gained the rhetorical high ground, and that went far in determining policy decisions.


    While Christian conservatives and hard-line neo-conservatives may see the developments after Sept. 11 in a positive light (after all, one might say that God and the United States have been given a larger piece of the planet with which to work), all Americans should be leery of any government that merges religiosity into political ends. Noble ideals such as freedom and liberty are clearly worth pursuing, but the administration promoted those concepts with its left hand while using its right hand to treat others -- including many U.S. citizens -- in an authoritarian, dismissive manner. Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears to be the latest entry in a historical record that shows that beliefs and claims about divine leading are no guarantee that one will exercise power in a consistently liberating, egalitarian manner.





    David Domke, a former journalist, is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the relationships among political leaders, news coverage and public opinion in the United States. He is the author of "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the 'War on Terror,' and the Echoing Press" (Pluto Press, 2004).


    © 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer


  • iVillage Member
    Registered: 04-16-2003
    Mon, 08-23-2004 - 1:58pm
    <

    Simplistic, black-and-white conceptions of the political landscape, most notably good vs. evil and security vs. peril.

    Calls for immediate action on administration policies as a necessary part of the nation's "calling" and "mission" against terrorism.

    Declarations about the will of God for America and for the spread of U.S. conceptions of freedom and liberty.

    Claims that dissent from the administration is unpatriotic and a threat to the nation and globe. >>

    We discussed or commented on these many times. What bothers me the most is "nationalism".

    "Motivated by this ideology, the Bush administration has sought to control public discourse and to engender a climate of NATIONALISM in which the public views presidential support as a patriotic duty and Congress (and the United Nations) is compelled to rubber-stamp administration policies."

    Nationalism is a word that has unsavory connotations. Heidegger's "Being and Time", mentions the word once in its 500 page pages; this was enough to label his philosophy "Nazism". Of course, that was a quarter century ago, so we shouldn't be expected to catch the undertones behind its usage.

    However, I agree we have not been well served by our media. I suspect most view this as a routine political season failing to pick up on the undercurrent of facism. Further, I doubt that many would believe it if the media did point it out.


    iVillage Member
    Registered: 04-16-2003
    Mon, 08-23-2004 - 5:03pm
    Missing the Point

    Monday, August 23, 2004; Page A14


    LAST FALL, DEFENSE Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ducked the embarrassing matter of grossly offensive, anti-Islamic remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin by asking the Defense Department's inspector general to examine his behavior. This was a ruse. The problem with Gen. Boykin's words was never the possibility that they violated this or that department regulation -- the sort of thing inspectors general are charged with investigating. The problem was that Gen. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was delivering himself of bigoted remarks -- generally while in uniform -- that directly undercut President Bush's repeated insistence that America's war is not against Islam generally and is not a clash of religious civilizations. By unloading the matter on the inspector general, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush avoided having to condemn the remarks forthrightly while seeming to take appropriate action.

    Now the inspector general's office has issued its report. And as one would expect, it avoids the only important issues that Gen. Boykin's remarks raised in the first place -- that is, whether the Defense Department ought to be espousing religious bigotry and whether Mr. Rumsfeld ought to take action when a senior officer does just that. We're still waiting for Mr. Rumsfeld to answer that question.

    Gen. Boykin's words do not fall in a gray area. He said in one speech of a Somali warlord that "I knew that my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol"; he described the war on terrorism as a "spiritual battle," noting that "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army"; and he famously described a dark section of a photograph of the Somali capital as the "evil" that is the real enemy. "It is not Osama bin Laden, it is the principalities of darkness. It is a spiritual enemy that will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus and pray for this nation and for our leaders." Such beliefs are the general's right, but when a senior defense official utters them in public, they undermine just about every value the administration is trying to project in this war.

    The report, however, finds only that Gen. Boykin failed "to clear his speeches with the proper authorities," that he failed "to preface his remarks with a disclaimer" that the views were his own and that he "failed to report travel reimbursement exceeding $260" on his 2002 financial disclosure form. All of this may be true, but the findings completely miss the point. Then again, that point should have been clear to Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld from the start.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24997-2004Aug22.html