46-The Church and the State Part 1

The Separation and Penetration of Church into State

By Jaxon Cohen

Part 1: The Problem

Centuries ago, a few Europeans fled a world where church and state were one. They sought religious freedom, but not the kind inculcating America today, the kind that says we're free to break a few laws in order to practice our beliefs. Instead, their idea was freedom from having to practice the state's beliefs. The attempt to remove the church from the state proceeded along the theory that the state must not favor one set of beliefs over another. The separation of church from state frees all religions to worship with integrity. Therefore, calling America a Christian nation is an affront to the founding principle of this country and an insult to every non-Christian American. The US is explicitly defined as secular, meaning church and state are separate with all persons equal before the law. 

Nations are populated by majorities and minorities. As the historical, Christian, white, male majority of this nation slides into the ranks of the minority, they fight the inevitable in every conceivable way. Redistricting, the criminalization of poverty, voter fraud laws, the incarceration of the ethnic male, campaign financing, cable news echo chambers, the widening wealth gap, and the growing ability of the cooperation to protect its members from prosecution are just a few examples of how this privileged clique clings to power. But as the clock ticks, this weakened majority becomes a solid minority and will have to stand on the value of their positions instead of their former position of value. And when the future majority rises, change will come from all directions. Will the one-percent shatter the populace or the populace shatter the one-percent? Whatever happens, the money-game won't protect 'the man' forever. The only useful question becomes: what's the total cost of resisting the new norm?

Of all the things the traditional majority has done, none is more un-American, more unconstitutional than the attempt to remove rights and privileges from select groups in the name of religion. The idea LGBT couples cannot marry because it threatens marriage is nonsensical and illogical. The very notion women do not have the right of biological determination is a non-starter. The victories of the mid-twentieth century took decades (even centuries) to accomplish. The cost was great but the result was too. 

Because of these strides, future attempts to target a group for discrimination can no longer be carried out openly. Jim Crow is dead. Instead, laws are crafted in angelic costumes, inhabited by demons. Legislative authors will the church beyond protected-class status; they want more than equality with the LGBT community; they will make the Church the exempt class. If the church is going to seamlessly insert itself into the state, they require the Ark fill with lawyers, lobbyists, and legislators, three by three. The strategy is no longer drafted from a position of offense but instead defense. 

This is cunning yet obvious. Consider Utah's religious discrimination law. Suddenly the LDS church wants us to believe it intends to protect gay rights? How are we suppose to buy into the idea the authors of Prop 8 suddenly work to insure the very thing they continue to resist? Answer: cognitive dissidence. This group continues fight any kind of definitive, unifying, Federal mandate. A more extreme example of how the state moved against the people in the name of the church is the Indiana legislation, recently 'clarified.' The backlash to this overreach prompted Arkansas' Governor to reject a similar bill. In the aggregate, these laws allow the church to supersede the state by placing its values above all others – the very thing the founders fled. A new confederacy of the like-minded marshal their forces behind bills that place their desire to practice prejudice above the Constitutional right of equal treatment before the law. They are reversing the very initiative that led those few to cross the deep. There is still so much wrong with the Indiana law because the very existence of any such law is the real problem.