LETTERS to the editor:
Readers respond to Church-State Separation article
IV Leader Oct. 19, 2006
Dear Editor:
I am writing to clarify the position I took at the recent
Constitution Day talk on The Separation of Church and State.
In the article about the event, I am quoted as having said
that I believe we should not have a secular state.
In fact, I said the opposite. We do and must live in a
secular state, that is, a state where laws are not governed by overt religious
ideologies. That being said, my point did become more complicated and perhaps
this is where the confusion arose.
We live in a secular state, but part of the job of that
secular state is to protect religious freedoms (among others), including both
the right to be openly religious and to be, as Dr. Beyer put it, openly
"irreligious".
This means that we can not and should not build "a wall of
separation" between private spaces where religion is allowed and public places
where religion is not allowed, since all members of our society have the right
to maintain their identities, practices and beliefs in all spheres of society.
However, I would add that individuals who are acting as
agents of the state, i.e. teachers, forfeit that right temporarily so that their
own religious beliefs are not thrust upon those who are enjoying the benefits of
a public space for a secular purpose like education.
To further clarify, you should have the right to have a
religious group meet and offer its message in a public space as long as that
space is open to all religious groups (Muslims, Jews, or even Devil Worshippers)
and those involved are acting as a free agents and are not employed by the state
to be performing a secular task at that given point in time.
I know these issues are complicated and confusing.
If they weren't, we wouldn't have anything to discuss.
However, in the attempt to create a neat synopsis, something
was lost in translation.
Amanda Bigelow
Professor, Political Science
Dear Editor:
I’m inspired to write a letter to the editor after reading
your front page article about Church-State Separation — which is not to be found
in our Constitution.
If you study these documents, you will find not the
church-state separation doctrine, but the clear Christian faith of the founding
fathers. They claimed that our rights and their authority to start a new country
came from God and not some secular source. We have always been a nominally
Christian country.
It is only until recently that the issue has been contested.
I have a World War II soldier’s New Testament with an introductory letter signed
by Franklin D. Roosevelt on its front page that clearly states he believed this
is a Christian country. The cost of printing the New Testament was paid for by
the U.S. government.
We are now a society that values TV, Web surfing and video
games more highly than knowing where France and Turkey are located — or what the
history of our country is.
It is important to remember where we came from and how our
most cherished values come not from our own reasoning, but from the beliefs and
sacrifices of those who came before us. If we forget our past, we are destined
to become a meaningless country like so many others on the planet.
What makes us different is that we are a nation based on
Judeo-Christian principles.
Gene Trumbo Ottawa