Religious Wingnuts Suddenly Favor Church-State Separation

[Savonarola]

I love PZ Myers' blog Pharyngula, even though I don't read it nearly enough. Mostly a science blog, Myers delves into politics and religion on occasion. He's a big anti-ID advocate and despises organized religion.

Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to subvert my don't-overcite-for-the-sake-of-not-burning-out-FFForums-users reverse quota and link to a recent Pharyngula entry, "Even wingnuts respond to culture shock." It cites an article from worldnetdaily.com detailing one evangelical's "persuasion" that having the Constitution protect everyone's religious freedom (instead of only his own) is a good thing.
"How did this happen?", you ask. Well, it was the old shoe-on-the-other-foot trick, except this time it wasn't a hypothetical.

Coming from a fairly traditional Southern upbringing, I was not at all initially surprised when a voice came over the PA and asked everyone to rise for the invocation. I had been through this same ritual at many other high-school events and thought nothing of it, so to our feet my wife and I stood, bowed our heads, and prepared to partake of the prayer. But to our extreme dismay, the clergyman who took the microphone and began to pray was not a Protestant minister or a Catholic priest, but a Buddhist priest who proceeded to offer up prayers and intonations to god-head figures that our tradition held to be pagan.

We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions. I am sorry to say that in the confusion of the moment we chose the easier path and elected to continue to stand in silence so as not to create a scene or ill will among those who were seated nearby. [source]

So the wackos who insist that dissenters should stand there and shut up (or sit down and shut up) suddenly don't like the taste of their own bigoted medicine. Go figure.


This reminds me of earlier this week when I was substituting at a local school. The room next to mine was the choir room, and my ears perked up at hearing the tune of "Amazing Grace" coming through the wall. This I found mildly controversial, but considering the region, it certainly wasn't a surprise. Next, though, I heard "God Bless America," and finally, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Sadly, though, this pales in comparison to the three students who -- at the conclusion of the pledge of allegiance recited over the PA system as morning custom -- declared, "Amen."

[Glen]

Historically, it is often another denomination that realizes that a second denomination, wth which they do not agree theologically, is trying a power grab. Eventually the Catholics will realize that the fundamentalists do not consider their religion to be the one for public school consumption. Or vice versa. Or the Mormons realize that that they are being "discriminated against" in multireligious communities. It is inevitable. Then the lawsuits begin.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It is, in fact, the reason for the separation of church and state (Congress shall make no laws...) - there were so many different sects of christianity, not even counting the relatively few Jews and relatively many ignored other religions - that a power grab could only be prevented by keeping religion totally out of government (or at least as much as possible). I have ancestors who came to America pre-1776 to escape the "church tax" to the Anglicans, as they were "good Presbytarians".

Sav - children have always been easily endoctrinated - Hitler's youth programs would have proved that, if the various parochial schools hadn't already. Some of them reject/rebel when they get older, some never have a clue. How much television has to do with how many start thinking is something we probably will never know, since most studies into that get suppressed fairly early on.