The Bosque Boys

Honor killings. Family members killing women they feel have shamed the family. Common in Islamic countries and in Islamic communities in Europe. Article here.

Three cheers for multiculturalism. All cultures indeed are equally worthy. But wait, you say. Honor killings are a perversion of Islam. If so, why are we not seeing a massive effort to eradicate honor killings from Muslim communities? Why are we not seeing massive and popular discussion in Islamic forums on how to "de-patriarchalize" the Quran, a book explicitly addressed to men, with occasional references to their women? Stupid is as stupid does. A religion is as that religion does. Show me the practice, not some idealized version with little or no reflection in the real world.

This article from Frontpage is damning for the WCC simply by stating the facts. (Link from The Institute on Religion and Democracy)The tyrant of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, was aided in coming to power by church money through the WCC, especially from American Methodists. Even at an early stage Mugabe showed his brutality, his group committing atrocities on civilians white and black. The WCC owes the world, and the people of Zimbabwe, an apology.

Jesus told his disciples to be harmless as doves and as wise as serpents. The two characteristics go together. When churchmen are not wise as serpents then they can do great harm. Not every group with "Liberation" in its name is on the side of the angels. (As I think David Read once observed.) Another example of the Jane Fonda fallacy, I suppose: side A is evil therefore their opponents side B must be righteous.

The Church should always be on the side of justice. And the Church should exercise wisdom in weighing options for support. Shame on the WCC for its lack of wisdom.

Rick Weiss of the Washington Post has written a surprisingly even-handed account of the embryonic stem-cell funding bill just passed by the Senate. The president promises a veto.

According to CBS, President Bush will veto legislation to provide Federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, if the bill makes it out of the Senate. The bill is similar to one he vetoed previously.

Good for Dubya. Not only has adult stem-cell research shown more promise, but taking innocent human life is immoral.

Congress is now considering new legislation to give employees more latitude in expressing religious beliefs in the workplace. Story here. Link from The Layman Online.

Here is a link to the text of the bill. HR 1431 IH

Summary: H.R.1431
Title: To amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to establish provisions with respect to religious accommodation in employment, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep McCarthy, Carolyn [NY-4] (introduced 3/9/2007) Cosponsors (14)
Latest Major Action: 3/9/2007 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Cosponsors:
COSPONSORS(14), ALPHABETICAL [followed by Cosponsors withdrawn]: (Sort: by date)
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [MD-6] - 3/9/2007 Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] - 3/9/2007
Rep Cantor, Eric [VA-7] - 3/9/2007 Rep Davis, David [TN-1] - 3/20/2007
Rep Edwards, Chet [TX-17] - 3/9/2007 Rep Franks, Trent [AZ-2] - 3/9/2007
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18] - 3/9/2007 Rep Jindal, Bobby [LA-1] - 3/9/2007
Rep Price, David E. [NC-4] - 3/9/2007 Rep Souder, Mark E. [IN-3] - 3/9/2007
Rep Van Hollen, Chris [MD-8] - 3/9/2007 Rep Wamp, Zach [TN-3] - 3/9/2007
Rep Weiner, Anthony D. [NY-9] - 3/9/2007 Rep Wexler, Robert [FL-19] - 3/9/2007

With the attempt to challenge the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiaitive before the Supreme Court, I continue some background on the relation of government to religion in the U.S. This topic often is referred to as Church and State.

In part 1, I briefly surveyed the situation from the founding of the United States into the 20th century. Summary: by the 1830s we had a de facto Protestant establishment that was supported by the courts. Things changed in the 20th century. In part 2 I highlighted the cultural shifts that form the background for these changes. Summary: religious diversification of the population, secularization of the elites, and the expansion of the role and power of the federal government, vis-a-vis state and local governments, gradually removed court support from the de facto Protestant Establishment. In part 3 I wish to summarize specific cases that brought us to the present situation. Part 3 will take multiple posts. (There are many helpful books on these things. For specific cases I recommend a good handbook such as The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.) (cont. below)

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In addition to the Okie Gardener's excellent coverage and background in re the Supreme Court and the President's Faith-based Initiatives, please consider this instructive review of Philip Hamburger's 2002 offering, Separation of Church and State, from the Intercollegiate Review (Volume 39, Number 1-2; Fall 2003/Spring 2004), written by friend of the Bosque Boys, Cory Andrews.

Read the review, "The Metaphor as Wrecking Ball," in PDF here.

In part 1, I briefly surveyed the situation from the founding of the United States into the 20th century. Summary: by the 1830s we had a de facto Protestant establishment that was supported by the courts. Things changed in the 20th century. In this post, I wish to highlight the cultural and legal factors that led to the change, then in part 3 cover the change with reference to specific cases.

First, even as the de facto Protestant Establishment was strengthening, population demographics were changing in ways that would ultimately help undermine this hegemony. Large numbers of Irish and German immigrants radically increased Roman Catholic numbers in the U.S. so that even prior to the Civil War Roman Catholicism was the largest single religious group, though still smaller than the aggregate of Protestants. After the Civil War immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe augmented Roman Catholicism, brought large numbers of Eastern Orthodox Christians to this country, and significantly increased the Jewish population. Some changes were homegrown; new religious movements such as Christian Science, Transendentalism, and Mormonism would challenge Protestantism's grip on American culture and politics. Favoritism toward generic Protestantism seemed to discriminate against these other groups. (more below)

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Perhaps the best "one-stop-shopping" for information on the current court challenge is LawMemo here.

Other sources are found in my earlier post.

At this juncture, the court case will decide whether taxpayers have the standing in court to sue the executive branch over a First-Amendment issue such as the Faith-Based Initiative. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, then I assume the foundation will then take the Bush Administration to court over the constitutionality of the Faith-Based Initiative plan.

For historical background on church and state in the U.S., see the category Religion and Public Policy on the right of this blog.

The question of the consitutionality of President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative is before the Supreme Court. I have posted information already here.

In this post I wish to give a brief historical survey of the relationship between Church and State in the United States into the 20th century.

To begin, I will repeat material from an earlier post on Religion and Public Policy. (If interested in the entire series, see Religion and Public Policy under Categories on the right.)

The Constitution of 1787 has been called the most secular document produced until then. There is no mention of God. ( An omission which some 19th-century evangelicals tried and failed to correct through Constitutional amendment.) And the few mentions of religion are negative (no religious tests for public office, etc.) Furthermore, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a religion, or from interfering with the free exercise of religion. As is well known, we have been debating since then exactly what the role of religion, and its relationship to government, should be regarding public policy. Avoiding the lengthy and messy details of this history, I wish to make a few points.

First, neither the Declaration of Independence, nor The Articles of Confederation, nor the actions of the Continental Congress, nor the Constitution of 1787, nor the actions of Congress in the opening decades of our nationhood, can be understood to be a deliberate rejection of religion. This assertion can be sustained by comparing our Revolution and its aftermath to the French Revolution. Even our most Enlightenment influenced founders such as Jefferson and Franklin were products of the English-speaking Enlightenment, not the French-speaking. They rejected traditional Christianity, but did not reject the idea of God and an orderly universe governed by laws established by the divine Law Giver. Jefferson and Adams did not hope that all religion would die away; they hoped that a sort of Rational Christianity would replace traditional sects. My point: the founders did not envision a secular society as we understand one, therefore the context in which to understand our Constitution, and by extension our present government including public debate, is not that of a thoroughly secular world-view.

Second, in prohibiting the Federal government from establishing a religion (First Amendment), the founders were paying homage to two realities: states with their own laws, including established churches in some of them (Massachusetts was the last to disestablish in 1833); and the Christian diversity of the American population in which no single church had the alliegance of an overwhelming majority of citizens. Another reality that may have influenced the decision, a significant number of Americans belonged to no church. (Though very few of these were secular men and women in the modern sense of the term; their worldview tended to be a kind of generic Protestantism.) My point: the no establishment clause cannot be understodd as a mandate for removing religion from the public square.

Third, the history of political discourse, and public policy, in the United States is filled with religious motivation and rhetoric. Slavery, Women's Rights, Consumption of Alcohol, the place of Farmers and Workers in the Industrial Economy, Race Relations, and more, all have been argued in Christian language and reasoning. Point: historical precedent allows the use of religious reasoning in public discourse, and by extension, in public policy.

(More below.)

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