My expectation is that a representative/senator/president or whatever elected official leads and votes with the best policy in mind, and with the best outcome for all his constituents at heart. I don’t want a political leader making decisions because of their personal religious views; that goes for Christians, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc. If a Muslim Congressman said that Allah told him to vote a certain way there would be uproar on the right. But a Christian is just being a real American voting a certain way because of Jesus. It’s nothing short of a double standard.

i have no problem with a leader drawing from their rearing to make decisions; empathy can also be a very powerful tool. i have no problem with a leader taking time to reflect and pray if they so choose on decisions. but i do have a problem when leaders start leading this nation or theit state/locality the way ‘we believe jesus would want.’

you dont have to read the Bible to figure out what the best policy. if the bible/quran/other religious textx plays a small peripheral part in your decision making process, i have no problem with it. but when it starts taking the place of real policy making through a policy making process, then i start having problems.

Is your view such that a Christian who believes the Bible as God’s revealed Word to his children must renounce his moral and spiritual values in order to obtain your approval? Or are Bible-believing Christians automatically disqualified from casting a vote because they are a danger to the body politic?

You’re free to oppose Christians in the political realm, of course. Persecution of Christians is hardly a new development in human history, but it is somewhat of a novel policy approach coming from someone who claims adherence to “Republican values.”

with regards to speech, there are already restrictions on speech. the courts have established clear tests to define what is not an acceptable form of speech. there has yet to be an instance that i know of where the court decisions on speech restrictions met as much political and social controversy as a gun restriction.

and again, i am not saying that free practice of religion is wrong. worship who you want how you want. since we are on the topic of religious freedom, why do many on the right that cling to this freedom of religion have a problem with a mosque being built near ground zero? as long as they legally purchase the property and follow the laws and codes, what’s wrong with it? is not refusing them a permit a violation of freedom of religion?

my problems arise when we use a specific religion to interpret what the constitution means or how to create and apply laws. is there a problem with a few senators praying once a year? no. is there a problem with saying “this ia a christian nation and we run the nation like Jesus wants”? yes.

Maybe we should appoint a small group of trusted leaders — maybe we could call them a politburo — and they could decide which free speech, what witness of faith, and what circumstances of self-defense citizens (still?) are permitted to exercise? They could keep us away from that slippery slope and help prevent anyone getting offended by someone exercising liberties in a potentially irresponsible manner inconsistent with the broader needs of the community.

Maybe over time we’d even learn these boundaries or respect and responsibility well enough we could do away with this sort of “dictatorship of the proletariat” thing and live in harmony with each other in some sort of communist-like system.

Strangely, I think I read about this kind of thing before. Some German guys wrote about it. I think they called it a manifesto or something.

The war because of god comment was made in reference to Bush 43. he claimed more than once that ‘god’ had ordained him to be president for the war, and that god had told him that war was the right option, and that he prayed and knew that war was the right choice.

the problem with the constitution is the vagueness of the amendment. we have an interpretation process in this country called the court and the supreme court has had a hay day trying to figure out what to make of it. if i could do 1 thing i would go back in time and tell the founders to be a hell of a lot more specific because their vagueness has caused a lot of controversy.

now i do think that the left and aclu make a big to do about little things like i said earlier. if a small town wants a xmas tree on city hall steps i have no problem with that because a law or regulation or policy is not being established (hence the ‘make no law respecting….’ clause). but, do i believe that prayer should be allowed in school, no. i believe that is an unecessary mix of religion the state. schools are not for prayer and spirituality, they are for learning academics. the house if for the religion and spirituality and it should be left that way.

mixing religions and state is a slippery slope, and i thinks that’s what jefferson was talking about. looking at his other works and letters, its easy to see that he was in the ‘i’d rather be safe than sorry’ school of thought when it came to balance of powers and even state/religion mixing. of course TJ was perhaps a touch paranoid, but it’s easy to see why.

Restricting religious liberty (what “separation of Church and State” ends up being when practiced) is incredibly inconsistent with our founding principles and directly violates the First Amendment. All we need to do is remain consistent with the wording and meaning of the First Amendment and we’ll be fine. No need to inject things that are not law (”separation of church and state”) into what is law (the First Amendment) in order to make it better. It’s worked as written for a long time.

As far as someone going to war because God personally told him to do so, I think that’s a pretty fanciful straw-man argument. Do you really think that anyone with such a proclivity could ever get elected to office? And do you really think trashing the First Amendment with a “separation of church and state” doctrine would in any way prevent such a thing?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Every one of your concerns is adequately handled by our Constitution and the First Amendment.

seperation of church and state is essential to the preservation of democratic rights. if we begin to muddle the lines of seperation between religion and government, then the government will have the ability to assert more control over religion in this nation. it’s not a one way street in that only religion will control government. when you tear down the seperation, the church can control the state, or the state can control the church. seperation isnt to pick on jesus, contrary to the cultural warriors claims of assault on christmas, it’s to ensure the rights of all religions to freely and openly practice.

it is essential that the state, and its publically elected leaders, do not pick and choose when it comes to religion. if a small town in mississippi wants to place a xmas tree on their city hall steps, that’s not wrong in my opinion. but when a sitting president says ‘god told me to go to war,’ that crosses the line.

Our nation is no more separate from God than it is from man.

You’re not one of those folks that seem to think the First Amendment contains the clause “separation of Church and State,” or perhaps think a private letter written to a Bible Society constitutes authoritative legislative authority, are you?

oh yes, let’s further mix religion and politics…great idea…

Being among the God-fearing doesn’t mean you were among patriots and vice-versa. Too often people like to get the two terms confused and muddled up into the same thing, fooling themselves into thinking that being a good patriot necessarily means that you’re following the will of God.

I do agree with you, bro, that to be a good patriot one does not need be a Christian and not all Christians are patriots. I am a damn good patriot who has received much praise from a number of avid readers of this site for his columns, and as most people know, I am not a Christian.