Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in his first remarks after being elected Wednesday afternoon, told Members of Congress that “Scripture” and “the Bible” are clear that they have been “ordained” by God.
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in his first remarks after being elected Wednesday afternoon, told Members of Congress that “Scripture” and “the Bible” are clear that they have been “ordained” by God.
And the Constitution and its Amendments are very clear about a separation of church and state.
Some idiots think it means the government can’t do anything to regulate churches. There a bunch of laws that disagree.
It actually explicitly doesn’t say you can’t relate churches.
If we’re going strictly by what the words say, as long as the people are still legally allowed and freely allowed to practice their religion, Congress technically has the right to regulate religious institutions to their hearts content.
It’s not like it says “shall make no law regulating an institution of religion.”
The Vermont Constitution has a much more explicit freedom from religion:
Article 3. [Freedom in religion; right and duty of religious worship]
That all persons have a natural and unalienable right, to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of their own consciences and understandings, as in their opinion shall be regulated by the word of God; and that no person ought to, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of conscience, nor can any person be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of religious sentiments, or peculia[r] mode of religious worship; and that no authority can, or ought to be vested in, or assumed by, any power whatever, that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner control the rights of conscience, in the free exercise of religious worship. Nevertheless, every sect or denomination of christians ought to observe the sabbath or Lord’s day, and keep up some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the revealed will of God.
Everytime I hear of Vermont it feels like the only sane, progressive state in the US. It almost feels like a seperate country compared to everywhere else.
What’s the opinion of it in the US?
You can’t fart in a parking lot without stinking up a Subaru.
It is entirely composed of a coat factory, an ice cream factory, and B&Bs.
I’d move there if y’all had better winters and beaches.
“no law” is not literal it is aspirational. At least according to what I have heard. If it was literal there could be zero rules about speech which breaks the constitutional ideas of oath of office and treason charges.
The aspirational would be a government that doesn’t even know religion exists. It is taxed, regulated, and given the same respect as any other institution.
A bunch of states don’t tax church property and both states and feds don’t tax earnings for this reason.
Who watches the nightwatchers? Who or what systems could regulate the government? Ask yourself
Oh yeah the churches are the group that I’m gonna trust with that.
Can the argument not go both ways? I’m not saying I would trust the church to watch over the government or vice versa I’m simply making an observation that tyrannical government overreach etc is plausible and a potential cause for concern for any person that places a degree of their trust in the systems or bodies around them
Ok, show me where it says that then
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
That’s really more a bar on state religion, that again doesn’t really prevent our new speaker from say proposing a bill that donates Federal funds to his favorite church, so long as the government isn’t in control of said church.
That would be news to Madison, the man who wrote it. He specifically wrote it to stop a religious funding policy in Maryland. As he pointed out funding would have to pick and choose which religions to fund
It would also be news to Jefferson- his letter to the Danbury Baptists highlights that states like Mass and CT established state religions under the confederation rules, which put Baptists in CT in the role of a religious minority, required to pay taxes to the Congregational Church. In colonial times it was the established religion, a state of affairs that would continue until it was ‘disestablished’ as the state religion via a state constitutional amendment in 1818.