Church and State

[billingscat]

Got a recent email that brought up an interesting point. Recently the issue of seperation of church and state has come up with no prayers in school, no more ten commandments, etc. Well if the state is serious about having such a seperation why not make Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter all regular days. This would mean government officials would work on those days, but good luck trying to get rid of their days off. Also if you really want to get into it Sunday should be just a normal day as it was originally set aside for a day of worship. Just something I thought was interesting.

[velochat]

Christmas is the only federal holiday related to religion. There are no federal Easter or Good Friday holidays.

[SonomaCat]

Got a recent email that brought up an interesting point. Recently the issue of seperation of church and state has come up with no prayers in school, no more ten commandments, etc. Well if the state is serious about having such a seperation why not make Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter all regular days. This would mean government officials would work on those days, but good luck trying to get rid of their days off. Also if you really want to get into it Sunday should be just a normal day as it was originally set aside for a day of worship. Just something I thought was interesting.

You're probably right... we probably shouldn't take those off as holidays if we followed the letter of the law. However, those lunar calendar holidays have been celebrated since the earliest of the pagan religions and appear in nearly every culture (as everyone figured out the equinox and solstice stuff eventually), so I guess nobody is in a hurry to get rid of them. Besides, nobody is going to complain about a day off. We'd just have to come up with more dead guys to name holidays after, and people would complain much more about those selections.

Saturday was actually the day set aside for worship -- at least per the ten commandments and genesis. Again, though, nobody is going to complain about days off. The current weekends off thing is the result of labor laws (resulting from union pressure) and isn't really tied to religion at all.

I understand your line of thinking -- it's always tempting to use an argument of hyperbole to refute something that bothers us. Fortunately, the courts have applied some level of common sense to the separation of church and state. They only apply to circumstances where a government body is doing something that actively promotes or discourages a particular religion. That is why forced prayer in schools (kids can still pray as much as they want -- they just aren't forced to do it) and the ten commandments stuff is important. We can't let the government play a role in encouraging a particular set of religious or anti-religious beliefs -- that's not their job. That belongs in the private sector. That's what separates us from Iran and Saudi Arabia. That's a very good thing.

The courts have applied the common sense approach on many levels. They still allow the "In God we Trust" on the money, noting that it really isn't being religiously oppressive at all, the holidays are still on the calendar (as they are mainly secular events these days anyway), and many other examples of minor items that just don't rise to the level of "promoting religion." As someone who is stuanchly in favor of strict church/state separation, I find the current approach of the court to be perfectly reasonable. We shouldn't be looking to eradicate any mention of religion by the government -- that would be silly and actually very harmful (as it does exist and should be recognized). However, the government simply should not be in the position to do things that force it on people, especially children (who are the least able to stand up for themselves).

[SonomaCat]

And, yes, my analogy using Iran and Saudi Arabia is a bit of hyperbole as well... but it illustrates the point dramatically.

[gtapp]

If we are going to pay homage to GOD then lets be fair. We need a holiday to honor Goblins, Zombie's and the Easter Bunny.

[SonomaCat]

Man, if I would have found this article about a month ago, it would have saved me about 30 postings. It covers many of the same topics that I brought up in here, especially the "Happy Holidays" things, along with the bogus "School bans Declaration of Independence" story.

Reason is a Libertarian magazine, I believe.

http://www.reason.com/links/links122004.shtml

[SonomaCat]

An interesting article that speaks to yet another court case in the field of church v. state in the classroom setting:

http://slate.com/id/2113611/