01 Mar Separation of Church & State: What should exactly be the government’s role in this?
The U.S Constitution’s First Amendment is used as the basis for how the Supreme Court interprets the doctrine of a “separation of church and state.” It grants citizens of United States the religious liberty and the freedom to reject religion if they choose to. Also, it prohibits the government from getting involved in religious matters. While the U.S. does not have an official religion, there are many instances where references to God appear in facets of American life.
In the repeated clash over the separation of church and state, both the religious right and the secular left invoke the Founding Fathers’ primary purpose of advocating their positions. Simply put, the religious right thinks that America was meant to be a Christian country, whereas the secular left believes it was meant to be a secular one. Neither side is completely accurate on the historical dimension of the issue. The religious right precisely notes that the phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Constitution. However, it inexplicably claims that this principle does not derive from the First Amendment’s interdiction on “an endowment of religion.” The statement “separation of church and state” has been drawn to Jefferson. Fellow Founding Father John Adams addressed that the U.S. government was constituted “merely by the use of reason and the senses.” “It will never be represented,” Adams stressed, that the Founders “were in any degree under the influence of Heaven.” The Treaty of Tripoli (1796), signed by Adams, specifies that “the government of the United States of America is not in any manner founded on the Christian religion.”
While the religious right incorrectly claims that the Constitution is based on Biblical principles, the secular left also involves in revisionism by declaring that the Founding Fathers wanted an arbitrary separation of church and state in the modern sense. Legislative sessions generally began with public prayers in the era of the framers, as they still do nowadays. In the early years of the democracy, churches in individual states were funded by taxes, whereas other states like Virginia rejected that system. There was no clear unison among the Founding Fathers about what the First Amendment meant.
Proponents of the issue believe that, in governments where the church is tangled with the state, there is often a need to disentangle laws with the church before they get executed. If the church thinks the action is morally wrong, such as requiring corporations to pay for birth control services through health insurance, then the government is not supposed to take any action. Because there is separation, the church is built out of the role of governing. That enables the government to focus on the body while the church focuses on the soul. People choose to believe what seems right for their perspective. From a societal viewpoint, however, individual aspects cannot employ in blanket terms. We are all each a little distinctive, even if we believe related things by separating outlook away from real-life experiences, society benefits by having both.
Opponents say Government can take advantage of the separation by denoting places where ethics or morality might lack society benefits because one group cannot be precisely targeted. Churches can also take advantage of the division between them and the state. The church can be used to form a division within society between those who share a similar faith and those who do not.
The pros and cons concerning separation of church and state will always be debatable at some level. By voting, you can bring a conclusion to it. Let us know, Should the government support a separation of church and state by removing references to God on money, federal buildings, and national monuments?
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