Americans Don't Believe in Church/State Separation

More likely I think, though, is that most Americans just don’t think very deeply or seriously about the positions they adopt.

How generous, I would have said “More likely I think, though, is that most Americans just don’t think.”

Wasnt it a few years back where a study found that some 15% of american high school students couldnt find the Atlantic ocean on a map?

I think people want what they want..and it doesnt matter if there are contradictions, they dont care, they couldnt see the contradictions if you wrapped them up in 20lb tuna and beat them over the head with it.

So it doesnt surprise me in the least that people want thier religion in government and freedom to worship thier religion but fail to realise that removes freedoms from those outside that religion..They dont care.

Maybe I’m just a cynic…

(Cynic) A person who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin

Americans simply haven’t thought about the issues

Maybe. But the results of these polls also depend to a very large extent upon how a question is phrased.

For example, if they are asked whether people should enjoy freedom of religion, it is guaranteed that the answer will be overwhelmingly in the affirmative. However, it they are asked whether religious freedom should allow one group to impose its views on others, they will answer in the negative.

I also suspect that if the public is asked whether the government should be allowed to take over Medicare, the answer would also be strongly in the negative.

So we should not lend too much credence to these push polls where leading questions are presented to uninformed and shallow-thinking people who are expected to give instant and predictable answers.

However, the Republicans happen to be masters of this ploy and the media dutifully plays them up which gives them credibility which, in turn, shapes much of the public opinion.

I agree with the previous poster that these studies are a bit biased because of the phrasing of the questions. I also agree that a lot of people don’t think through issues, and I know that most people have difficulty “checking” themselves. (why do I think this way? are there holes in my theory? is my conclusion a result of personal bias? etc, etc.) But I don’t believe that people’s feelings on separation of church and state issues is necessarily a result of misunderstanding or intellectual laziness.

Religion is an important part of most people’s lives, and most attribute a lot of the good in their lives to their faith and devotion to god. It logically follows that those people would believe that if more people shared their faith, then their lives would improve, as would the community/country/world.

Most people believe that life is more complicated today and the world is more dangerous than when they were growing up. Maybe that’s true, maybe we just have more access to information these days, but I think many really do believe that the absence of religion in schools and government is a big part of the reason for this percieved “deterioration” of society. I think they’re mistaken of course, but not necessarily thoughtless or hypocritical. They just have a different worldview.

those people would believe that if more people shared their faith, then their lives would improve

In other words, religious Christians believe that if all Moslems adopted their own dogma then they would be better off. Not surprisingly, religious Moslems hold exactly the opposite view. Even within the same religion, the self-righteousness of its various sects such as the Catholics and the Protestants and the Shias and the Sunnis makes the matter infinitely more complicated. On top of that, since there is no logic involved here, the only way to settle this dispute has been at the point of a sword (or a gun) throughout human history.

The Founding Fathers were only too painfully aware of the evils of mixing the Church and the State and they drew their lessons from the history of Europe when the Church was the State and which, significantly enough, is referred to today as the Dark Ages. So they tried to spare their own newborn nation of that trauma but the way things are going today and America is deliberately ignoring their wisdom and sliding back into the mire of religion, the future is looking increasingly bleak.

Dave in LV, not exactly where I was going with that. Really what I was getting at was that people’s motivations are not as thoughtless or as sinister as they may appear from our side of the fence. Of course everyone would want their own religion in there, but hey, they all think they’re right. So of course it’s infinitely better that we don’t have a government-endorsed religion. Please keep in mind that I disagree with those who oppose strong separation of church & state. My point was that it’s important to take into account people’s intentions. Otherwise we would all hate each other.

it’s important to take into account people’s intentions.

Well, the atheist’s intention is to rid the world of the plague of blind belief but nobody seems to pay any attention to that.

Besides, as the saying goes, the path to a very hot place is supposedly paved with good intentions so we need to be extra careful here.:)

>Well, the atheist’s intention is to rid the world of the plague of blind belief but nobody seems to pay any attention to _that_.

“The privilege of faith is a universal human right.”
–Karl Marx, 1844, from his Comment on The Jewish Question by Bruno Bauer

This from the same atheist who wrote that religion was the “opium of the people” in his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.”

Marx was a highly vilified atheist and often maligned as being aligned with that the right refers to as “atheist regimes.” This horrible atheist wrote publicly that it is a universal human right for every person to be able to exercise religious freedom.

Tracieh, to add to your point (and I suspect you are aware of the following), many in the right (political and religious) either don’t know or ignore the context of the religion as the “opiate of the masses” theme. Much of early industrial capitalism (when Marx was writing) was extremely cruel and exploitive to workers. Marx objected to the role of much common religion at that time telling workers to obey their bosses and ignore unfair conditions in this life because they would be rewarded in the next. For Marx, religion acted as an apologist for exploitive capitalist interests in that it encouraged exploited working classes to remain docile and not stand up for their rights.

Ned B:

To add to your own point, even the immediate context of the “opium of the people” quote surprised me. In that same paragraph Marx called religion the “sigh of the oppressed.” In fact, that paragraph is one of the most beautiful and poetic descriptions of “religion” I’ve ever read. Just to note, I only recently took on the task of reading Marx, so it is actually all new to me. And I’m stunned at his liberal mindset and his talk of liberty and freedom and his constant references to the U.S. as a model of a near perfect political system! If I didn’t know who he was, I’d think I was reading something by one of the founding fathers! I’m shocked at how he’s vilified, the more I read. He’s totally supportive of liberties and freedoms–most especially freedom to worship.

In the religion section, he basically described “religion” (actually Christianity) as an illusion that lends hope to those who have little hope. And his point is that if you want such an illusion to fall, you will never be successful until you address the underlying social conditions which make people feel/believe their lives are so bad that they need some promise of a future, better life (beyond the “vale of tears”) to cling to.

I find it ironic in that it makes perfect sense, but no Christian I know would recognize their religion as being exactly this. But if you were a happy person in a happy life who is comfortable with your life, and I approach you with a doctrine that claims life is suffering and death–you’d dismiss me as incorrect (since what I’m saying conflicts with your experience–that life is good). The fact so many embrace a religion that says that this world is one from which we should pray and hope for escape, speaks volumes. Ironically while Marx lived, there was plenty of oppression to choose from. But in a privileged society like our own, I have to wonder what’s up with us?

I’m afraid it is as simple as some of/half of Americans are dummies. Terrible but true. We have unprecedented access to education, but choose instead to watch junk TV and stop reading altogether…unless it’s a “How To Get Rich” book about business and finance, or similar garbage… or the bible of course. On the more sinister side of it, politically active right-wing christofascists are well aware of the ignorance of the masses, and take full advantage of the opportunity to rewrite history and brainwash them with their lies. As economies of other countries surge ahead (China, Brazil) we risk losing our competitive edge, and sliding backward to a medieval condition of the rich gentry on top and the rest of us ignorant, uneducated serfs kept in control by a theocracy.

We never talk about separation of synagogue and state, so Israel (a rogue state) gets 6 billion a year.

Rogue state??

The people in the United States have had a very privileged existence. They have been protected from abuse by religions thanks to the Founding Fathers. They were closer to the abuses of religion by Kings, Queens and the Religious leaders. They has official State Religions. Remember, the Colonies were English Colonies. They were English Subjects.
That means they were subjected to the official religion, the Church of England.
On the whole, they don’t know that and what that meant. They don’t seem to remember the story of the Pilgrims and why they came to America.
Nor do they know or understand Religious Persecution or Religious Prosecution.
Ask a survivor of the Holocaust. They’ll tell you.

“A less generous interpretation would be that Americans want religious liberty, but they only really want that liberty for themselves and like-minded Christians.”

Less generous, but far more correct.

“Ironically while Marx lived, there was plenty of oppression to choose from. But in a privileged society like our own, I have to wonder what’s up with us?”

tracieh, I’ve been wondering the same thing myself lately. I’m thinking that a variety of events, most recently the economic meltdown, have caused a large number of Americans to realize, possibly for the first time, how fragile the structures supporting our existences can be; to become disquietingly aware that, yes, the whole edifice, which had seemed so rock solid and reliable, actually COULD come tumbling down, and that it could happen with scary speed.

Thus, these people may not be reacting so much to current oppression in their lives as to anxious anticipations of a suddenly not-so-secure-seeming future for themselves and their families, as well as to an unexpected and unwelcome confrontation with the existential questions this insecurity frequently breeds.

I worked at a booth for Americans United (AU) at an art fair recently. Wow! People think separation of church/state is inherently anti-religion. Like you said, it protects religious liberty – for everyone – not just the majority. People ARE ignorant about the wall of separation. Recently in Michigan, they introduced a bill for those “I Believe” and “In God We Trust” license plates. I sent an op/ed to the local paper about the problems. Comments to my letter online were brutal and insulting! A large majority felt that in protecting that separation, I was the one pushing my views on them!
The first amendment is violated way too often and too few people address it – like elected officials whose constituents blindly believe them.

John H:

Interesting point. I can’t argue that perceived demons are every bit as “real” to the individual as “real” demons. So, what you say offers at least a viable explanation. Whether it’s correct or not, I don’t know. But point taken.

I will add one thing, though. I have spoken to people from Scandanavian countries who ask what is up with our religiosity. They often point out that their nations have no wall of separation–that they often have a state church–and yet rates of belief and religiosity are far lower there than in the US where we have a wall and try to enforce it.

Meanwhile, in some other nations, we have seen the mix of church and state be toxic–Ireland, the Mid-East, as examples.

I am not sure what makes some people try to push religion onto others–or what motivates them to want to use the government to do so. I think if we did put a state/national church in place, most Christians would quickly begin to learn that they disagree on far more religious issues than they knew, with regard to other Christians. And I would almost find it funny to have them trying to hammer out whose doctrines to put in place where.

Tongue in Cheek, I suggest we let them have a go at it. We allow for a national state church–a sanctioned religion that puts _its_ prayers in the schools, that puts _its_ specific god in the Pledge, and that we add belief and adherence and financial compensation to that church as part of our Constitution…as soon as the theists in our nation agree on the doctrines.

I’m guessing that such a church will never be established with that caveat…?

Very informative, thank you for your opinion!