Posted by
Louie Majunk on Tuesday, September 05, 2006 11:45:08 PM
A few days ago, I heard something that bothered me. Some nurses with whom I work were having a somewhat heated discussion. One said, "We have separation of church and state in this country."
A second nurse replied, "We really don't in reality."
The other shot back, "It's in the Constitution."
I was upset. All it took was a bunch of antireligious fanatics fighting long enough to keep religion behind closed doors, and now we have who knows how many otherwise intelligent people thinking that separation of church and state is some sort of constitutional "right". No such thing was written into the Constitution in general or the first amendment in particular. Leaving out "under God" in the pledge of allegiance to our flag was not written into the Constitution. Keeping God out of all corporate conversation was not written into the Constitution. The United States being a Christian nation was not written into the Constitution. This is what was written into the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."
What a heroic statement that is. The framers of our Constitution were saying the government was not to mandate any religious worship of any kind, but we could freely practice the religion we so chose. This worked just fine for almost 200 years. Then came the 1960's when we could no longer say prayers in public schools. The antireligious thing seemed to just snowball from there. In the early 1970's the so called "Jesus freaks" countered it. When Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 ... Wait! What on earth am I doing? I am not about to give anybody a little history on this stupid religious war of words. I do not believe the first amendment ever had any such intentions.
Our founding fathers might shed many a tear if they could see the warriors of this "culture war" now. On the other hand, they might laugh. Editorial writers and broadcast commentators probably will never admit it, but most people don't give a hoot or holler about any of this. And most fortunately, their religious practices or lack thereof is really in the spirit of the first amendment.
Take my apartment complex of 175 units for instance. On a typical Sunday morning, I go to Catholic mass. Some go to Protestant church services. Some even have transportation provided to these churches. Most are not to seen. They spend the morning sleeping off the late, Saturday night party.