THE RELIGION OF POLITICS

 

 

Heidi Cappadona
March 31, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

Did our founding fathers intend the separation of church and state as it is commonly used today? Can we truly have a body politic without a religion? A look into history helps us understand the question as well as the answer since history is full of accounts detailing the persecution of individuals for any beliefs other then the ones accepted by the heads of the current ruling government. This is true in all nations. Governments have always held religious beliefs and imposed them on the masses. In fact, at the outset of the American revolution a majority of the thirteen colonies still had established tax-supported faiths, three Congregational, and five Anglican. The forefathers of our unique nation understood that men had beliefs however they did not agree that religion should be imposed on the masses.

Leading patriots, George Mason, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson won a �declaration of the free exercise of religion� from the 1776 State Constitutional convention and soon got all state aid to the Anglican Church cut off. In 1785, Jefferson�s �Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom� which declared, �all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion� guaranteed against being compelled to �support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever.� Jefferson believed that the state had no business taxing and supporting any choice religion and forcing its beliefs on the whole of society and that this infringed on the God-given right of individual liberty for all thus, the wording in the First Amendment to our Constitution states, �Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.� These men did not intend to alienate religion from politics, but intended to separate politics from supporting religion by limiting the powers of the federal government. Free individuals in a civil society governed by the moral laws of God are a free people with the liberty to believe as they wish in their own homes. Thomas Jefferson summarized this when he stated, �It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.�

The laws of nature and God are synonymous and universal and can not be separated from society without destroying it. The concepts that one must not be allowed to murder his neighbor; steal, lie, and cheat; and all men are created equal, are but common sense. When these laws of nature derived from God are put into law and enforced, they guarantee the liberty, freedom, and equality of every individual which maintains civil society. James Wilson, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and a signer of the Constitution said, �[L]aw, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God�Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine�Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.�

All mankind is religious by nature, whether of belief in the being of God and the revelation of his will to man or simply any system of worship and faith in powers governing the world. There is no such thing as having no belief, as this is either complete denial of the existence of reality or a �belief� in nothing. Thus, faith in the belief of the evolution of mankind and nature from an oozing spinning mass of nothingness, falls neatly into the category of religion and as we know, it is not the place of the our federal government to compel worship or financial support to any religion.

Today, the reinterpretation of the Constitution has resulted in courts at all levels, ruling in ways that essentially guarantee the freedom from religion, instead of the freedom of religion. Today, this new idea of �separation of church and state� is being used to effectively purge God from the fabric of our society and it its place, there will not be a religious void as this is impossible. The laws of nature and God are being replaced with a belief of subjective morality and truth. The religion of Secular Humanism has become the government�s chosen religion despite the Constitution and the first amendment and slowly, we are all being pressed into it.

Public schools teach our nation�s children the belief in evolution as fact and disallow the belief of creationism or cast doubt on it by showing it to be one of many religious beliefs held by small-minded, superstitious men when in fact, science has yet to prove evolution or disprove the existence of God.

In truth, there are only two religions, one that gives all glory to God and one that gives glory to man. The religions that give glory to man may do so in varying degrees, but without all glory to God, they are but different branches on the same tree. The thought that government can survive absent from all religion is one of folly as there is simply no such thing. Man will hold belief in one thing or another. When in power and not under the chains of a firm constitution, those who hold contempt for the laws of God and nature will instill their beliefs on the governed. Without the check and balance of the people in a free Constitutional Republic, only those who hold accepted beliefs will be allowed to hold office. Today it may seem as though our elected officials are helping us by making the government neutral and non-religious but in truth, they are simply replacing God with man and religion remains.

� 2005 Heidi Cappadona - All Rights Reserved