The separation disappeared when Dubya started tossing Federal funds to \”faith-based\” social service organizations. Pay to play, bro – you can always go back to living out of the collection plate, but don\’t whine about having to conform when your church accepts MY tax dollars to help run their program. Personally, I think any church that runs any business should lose their tax-exempt status, too, but I\’ll settle for this amusing little piece of irony. Serves \’em right.
\”Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.\” -John Jay, First Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and co-author of the Federalist Papers, letter to Jedidiah Morse, 28 Feb 1797.
\”The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.\” -John Marshall, in a letter to Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833, JSAC, p. 139. Marshall was Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801-1835.
“The real object of the [First] Amendment was not to countenance, much less advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.” -Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1811-1845, founder of Harvard Law School, Commentaries on the Constitution, Vol. II, 1871 (1833).
\”Christianity becomes not merely an auxiliary, but a guide, to the law of nature; establishing its conclusions, removing its doubts, and evaluating its precepts.\” -Joseph Story, \”The Value and Importance of Legal Studies,\” a lecture delivered August 25, 1829 at his inauguration as Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, cited in James McClellan, Joseph Story and the American Constitution (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1971), p. 66.
\”No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.\” -Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 1824. Updegraph v. Commonwealth; 11 Serg. & R. 393, 406.
“…if American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept ‘workers’ democracy’ as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept  regretfully, of course  the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done.”…”I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.” -Roger Baldwin, Unitarian Deist, Founding Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, from his entry in his thirtieth anniversary Harvard University classbook, 1935.
this is all a battle to force a religious institution to perform abortions; if the church pulls back their missionary work, then these opposition groups will yell \’see, they have no heart, all they want to do in control your body\’.
Not sure if the groups in this battle accept any federal dollars from W or not, not really sure what that has to do with it since they are providing services more efficently than the government can (sorry libocrats, it\’s true).
Oh, come on, Raoul, stop being disingenuous. This has NOTHING to do with how efficiently anyone does anything. As Geo pointed out, one has to go clear to the 20th century to find a view that rejects Christianity as the state religion – sadly, it\’s pointed out by a Communist, with whom I disagree just as much. But, as a fourth-generation Jew and practicing a-religious small-R republican in this \”entirely Christian\” country, it\’s hard for me to find a fully secular hole to hide in, and has been since I was forced to sing Christmas carols at school assemblies. At least I\’ve won THAT battle, as long as I don\’t move to Texas…The fact is that these faith-based organizations have taken operating fund grants away from struggling secular social service orgs (no, not themselves – the administration has slanted the granting process in their favor), and their acceptance of those monies means that they not only serve the ENTIRE population without proselytizing, but accept the fact that they have to hew to the widest possible set of rules when they take the public\’s money. If you only want to insure Catholics within Catholic guidelines, then only hire and serve Catholics and get your hands out of the public till!! I don\’t want to force the Catholic Church to perform abortions, but I won\’t abide trying to forbid them to employees who are paid with MY tax dollars. Do y\’all get it yet?
Yes, I get it. The problem that you have identified is that polytheism makes politics into religious warfare.
If as you suggested catholic hospitals hired and served only catholics, they would get sued for that. Religious freedom means that we are free to practice our religion. To say that catholic hospitals must violate their own precepts to stay in business is Stalinism.
As for you being forced to sing Christmas carols, if this is the worst abuse that you have suffered in this Christian nation you should be ashamed to complain.
If radical judges can force Catholic charities to provide contraception, based on nothing but the judges\’ prejudice against Catholic doctrine, they could also force Israelis to sing Christmas carols in their public schools. After all, federal dollars always come with strings attached, and the last I heard it was $3B a year in US tax dolalrs going to the Jewish state.
The main difference here is that without state and/or federal money the Catholic charities would still exist.
If the charites got no state or federal money, I guess some commie judge can base his disruption of their ministries on the equally tenuous idea that, if they get police and fire protection, they have to burn incense to Caesar.
Oh yeah, and it really is great that little Jews don\’t have to sing Christmas carols in school any more, and that the other 90% of the population isn\’t allowed to. *But* they *can* get a rubber at the nurse\’s office. Is that consistent with Jewish values?
Why yes, as a matter of fact, contraception is perfectly well within my values. As is abortion, as is divorce. As is FREE CHOICE. Don\’t equate Jews with Lubovichers, Shlomo – you should know better. We have our own right-wing nuts, and that\’s them. Nobody\’s gonna put a wig on ME and make me sit in a segregated section in shul.
And, last I heard, US courts have no jurisdiction over Israeli schools. Stop making facetious arguments. And the \”render unto Caesar\” crap won\’t cut it, either – as long as they keep their ideas to themselves, we contentedly leave them with their tax exempt status.
This is hardly an argument about an activist judiciary – that\’s just a diversion. The real problem is that Christianity – and particularly fundamentalist Christianity as practiced in this country – is so suffused with the concept of proselytizing that they can\’t take ANY stand on ANY secular issue without imposing an ideal that the only truly moral/acceptable/\”right\” way to administer anything is to make it hew to their own standards. You can have a baby at Zion Emmanuel hospital and they won\’t force you to circumsize him before leaving, nor do they refuse to do amputations because they\’re not in accordance with orthodox Jewish belief. Why do WE have to maintain a level playing field when they don\’t?
Not just contraception, but its distribution in public schools. \”No Bibles please. Rubbers? Right this way.\” This is Jewish \”values\”?
Are there no Jews who can, in good conscience, believe that Christmas carols in school are less harmful than rubbers, or instruction in the glories of \”gay\” sex for tenth graders?
\”And, last I heard, US courts have no jurisdiction over Israeli schools. Stop making facetious arguments.\”
This is not bupkis. Any federal court could rule that the immense aid given to Israel has strings attached. You didn\’t hear? Senator Inouye put money for yeshivas in France years ago and it was pulled. He knew it the courts would get involved so he withdrew the amendment. You should read the papers.
\”And the \’render unto Caesar\’ crap won\’t cut it, either – as long as they keep their ideas to themselves, we contentedly leave them with their tax exempt status.\”
It sounds like they live by your leave! Who founded this country? Jews? Muslims? The secular situation you are so happy with has been forty years, where Christianity has flourished for 400 years. You are on thin ice, and I will not go there with you. The climate can change very quickly!
\”You can have a baby at Zion Emmanuel hospital and they won\’t force you to circumsize him before leaving, nor do they refuse to do amputations because they\’re not in accordance with orthodox Jewish belief. Why do WE have to maintain a level playing field when they don\’t?\”
If your point was valid you would not be changing the topic. These are universally recognized legitimate medical procedures, unlike 99% of abortions and most contraception use. No Catholic charity is saying that Jewish babies born at St. Mary\’s must be baptized, nor do they turn away Jews or anyone else.
And no one is saying that Jewish charities must be hamstrung in any way. Apparently you must blow smoke to defend your kockamayme views.
Harrassing those among us who perform good deeds without discrimination is the height of foolishness. It is not discrimination for churches or sybagogues to provide jobs and services in accordance with their beliefs, and if they limited their hiring to church members you would be the first kvetching.
Why do you want judges telling religions how to behave? How is this the 1st Amendment? Coming from a Jew!
No one has a right to work at a Catholic charity, and no one has the right to have the Catholic Church or any other pay for her medical insurance or prescriptions, let alone procedures and drugs that are abhorant to the Catholic Church and its beliefs in what G*d approves.
So blech about living free in a Christian country. I say, the more Christian it is the better for Jews.
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WHERE IS THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The separation disappeared when Dubya started tossing Federal funds to \”faith-based\” social service organizations. Pay to play, bro – you can always go back to living out of the collection plate, but don\’t whine about having to conform when your church accepts MY tax dollars to help run their program. Personally, I think any church that runs any business should lose their tax-exempt status, too, but I\’ll settle for this amusing little piece of irony. Serves \’em right.
\”Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.\” -John Jay, First Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and co-author of the Federalist Papers, letter to Jedidiah Morse, 28 Feb 1797.
\”The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.\” -John Marshall, in a letter to Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833, JSAC, p. 139. Marshall was Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801-1835.
“The real object of the [First] Amendment was not to countenance, much less advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.” -Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1811-1845, founder of Harvard Law School, Commentaries on the Constitution, Vol. II, 1871 (1833).
\”Christianity becomes not merely an auxiliary, but a guide, to the law of nature; establishing its conclusions, removing its doubts, and evaluating its precepts.\” -Joseph Story, \”The Value and Importance of Legal Studies,\” a lecture delivered August 25, 1829 at his inauguration as Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, cited in James McClellan, Joseph Story and the American Constitution (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1971), p. 66.
\”No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.\” -Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 1824. Updegraph v. Commonwealth; 11 Serg. & R. 393, 406.
“…if American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept ‘workers’ democracy’ as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept  regretfully, of course  the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done.”…”I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.” -Roger Baldwin, Unitarian Deist, Founding Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, from his entry in his thirtieth anniversary Harvard University classbook, 1935.
Oops! How\’d that get in here?!
great post by Geo
this is all a battle to force a religious institution to perform abortions; if the church pulls back their missionary work, then these opposition groups will yell \’see, they have no heart, all they want to do in control your body\’.
Not sure if the groups in this battle accept any federal dollars from W or not, not really sure what that has to do with it since they are providing services more efficently than the government can (sorry libocrats, it\’s true).
Oh, come on, Raoul, stop being disingenuous. This has NOTHING to do with how efficiently anyone does anything. As Geo pointed out, one has to go clear to the 20th century to find a view that rejects Christianity as the state religion – sadly, it\’s pointed out by a Communist, with whom I disagree just as much. But, as a fourth-generation Jew and practicing a-religious small-R republican in this \”entirely Christian\” country, it\’s hard for me to find a fully secular hole to hide in, and has been since I was forced to sing Christmas carols at school assemblies. At least I\’ve won THAT battle, as long as I don\’t move to Texas…The fact is that these faith-based organizations have taken operating fund grants away from struggling secular social service orgs (no, not themselves – the administration has slanted the granting process in their favor), and their acceptance of those monies means that they not only serve the ENTIRE population without proselytizing, but accept the fact that they have to hew to the widest possible set of rules when they take the public\’s money. If you only want to insure Catholics within Catholic guidelines, then only hire and serve Catholics and get your hands out of the public till!! I don\’t want to force the Catholic Church to perform abortions, but I won\’t abide trying to forbid them to employees who are paid with MY tax dollars. Do y\’all get it yet?
Yes, I get it. The problem that you have identified is that polytheism makes politics into religious warfare.
If as you suggested catholic hospitals hired and served only catholics, they would get sued for that. Religious freedom means that we are free to practice our religion. To say that catholic hospitals must violate their own precepts to stay in business is Stalinism.
As for you being forced to sing Christmas carols, if this is the worst abuse that you have suffered in this Christian nation you should be ashamed to complain.
If radical judges can force Catholic charities to provide contraception, based on nothing but the judges\’ prejudice against Catholic doctrine, they could also force Israelis to sing Christmas carols in their public schools. After all, federal dollars always come with strings attached, and the last I heard it was $3B a year in US tax dolalrs going to the Jewish state.
The main difference here is that without state and/or federal money the Catholic charities would still exist.
If the charites got no state or federal money, I guess some commie judge can base his disruption of their ministries on the equally tenuous idea that, if they get police and fire protection, they have to burn incense to Caesar.
Oh yeah, and it really is great that little Jews don\’t have to sing Christmas carols in school any more, and that the other 90% of the population isn\’t allowed to. *But* they *can* get a rubber at the nurse\’s office. Is that consistent with Jewish values?
Why yes, as a matter of fact, contraception is perfectly well within my values. As is abortion, as is divorce. As is FREE CHOICE. Don\’t equate Jews with Lubovichers, Shlomo – you should know better. We have our own right-wing nuts, and that\’s them. Nobody\’s gonna put a wig on ME and make me sit in a segregated section in shul.
And, last I heard, US courts have no jurisdiction over Israeli schools. Stop making facetious arguments. And the \”render unto Caesar\” crap won\’t cut it, either – as long as they keep their ideas to themselves, we contentedly leave them with their tax exempt status.
This is hardly an argument about an activist judiciary – that\’s just a diversion. The real problem is that Christianity – and particularly fundamentalist Christianity as practiced in this country – is so suffused with the concept of proselytizing that they can\’t take ANY stand on ANY secular issue without imposing an ideal that the only truly moral/acceptable/\”right\” way to administer anything is to make it hew to their own standards. You can have a baby at Zion Emmanuel hospital and they won\’t force you to circumsize him before leaving, nor do they refuse to do amputations because they\’re not in accordance with orthodox Jewish belief. Why do WE have to maintain a level playing field when they don\’t?
Not just contraception, but its distribution in public schools. \”No Bibles please. Rubbers? Right this way.\” This is Jewish \”values\”?
Are there no Jews who can, in good conscience, believe that Christmas carols in school are less harmful than rubbers, or instruction in the glories of \”gay\” sex for tenth graders?
\”And, last I heard, US courts have no jurisdiction over Israeli schools. Stop making facetious arguments.\”
This is not bupkis. Any federal court could rule that the immense aid given to Israel has strings attached. You didn\’t hear? Senator Inouye put money for yeshivas in France years ago and it was pulled. He knew it the courts would get involved so he withdrew the amendment. You should read the papers.
\”And the \’render unto Caesar\’ crap won\’t cut it, either – as long as they keep their ideas to themselves, we contentedly leave them with their tax exempt status.\”
It sounds like they live by your leave! Who founded this country? Jews? Muslims? The secular situation you are so happy with has been forty years, where Christianity has flourished for 400 years. You are on thin ice, and I will not go there with you. The climate can change very quickly!
\”You can have a baby at Zion Emmanuel hospital and they won\’t force you to circumsize him before leaving, nor do they refuse to do amputations because they\’re not in accordance with orthodox Jewish belief. Why do WE have to maintain a level playing field when they don\’t?\”
If your point was valid you would not be changing the topic. These are universally recognized legitimate medical procedures, unlike 99% of abortions and most contraception use. No Catholic charity is saying that Jewish babies born at St. Mary\’s must be baptized, nor do they turn away Jews or anyone else.
And no one is saying that Jewish charities must be hamstrung in any way. Apparently you must blow smoke to defend your kockamayme views.
Harrassing those among us who perform good deeds without discrimination is the height of foolishness. It is not discrimination for churches or sybagogues to provide jobs and services in accordance with their beliefs, and if they limited their hiring to church members you would be the first kvetching.
Why do you want judges telling religions how to behave? How is this the 1st Amendment? Coming from a Jew!
No one has a right to work at a Catholic charity, and no one has the right to have the Catholic Church or any other pay for her medical insurance or prescriptions, let alone procedures and drugs that are abhorant to the Catholic Church and its beliefs in what G*d approves.
So blech about living free in a Christian country. I say, the more Christian it is the better for Jews.