A Return to Founding Values: Part II

I would like to expand a little on last week’s piece. This is not a rebuttal, as I wrote this before last week’s Courier was sent out.

I hope you noted that I did not say we weren’t a Christian people. However, we are not a specifically Christian nation. We have many religions in this country, many of which do not acknowledge Jesus Christ. This is our right, granted in our founding document, the Constitution.

The founders of this country framed our founding documents specifically to avoid endorsing any one religion. They were free thinkers and had seen how repressive having only one religion that everyone had to believe in could be.

The Pilgrims left their county because they no longer wanted to be forced to worship in the manner the powers-that-be, the Church of England, was mandating. Once they were settled here, they instituted a form of governing based upon similar repressive doctrines. You had to belong to their church, worship the way they dictated, and attend church services when they said if you were to hold any position of power. And even if you didn't want to hold a position of power, if you didn’t worship the way they wanted, you could be imprisoned and punished.

Would you want that setup here and now? Which church would you choose to be your ruler? We have the freedom to have many churches and doctrines to choose from. We also have the freedom to choose no church at all.

I happen to think the fathers of our country were correct. We have a great many freedoms other nations do not. Chief among these is our right to speak our minds, as long as it doesn’t harm another (such as shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre to cause a stampede).

Isn’t it great that we all have the right to believe as we wish without fear of being imprisoned for our beliefs?

I feel that those politicians who want to favor Christianity over all other religions in this country are trying to circumvent our Constitution, which they have sworn to uphold, and as such are bordering on sedition.

Certainly, we are more than able to worship (or not) the way we choose. If we want to institute sanctioned prayers in our schools, we need to set them up as church schools and not accept federal or state funding. Students are free to pray in public schools, just not in an organized way. No one can know our thoughts, and if we pray silently, in our minds, that cannot legally be stopped.

So to those who bemoan the lack of God in our school system, I say bunk. Doesn’t it say in the bible to lock yourself away and pray in secret? We don’t need to make a big production of it to pray to God to show we are sincere or Godly. We need only to live in the way the bible instructed: Love thy neighbor... and judge not.