Church and State

When I was a little girl, every Sunday morning I was forced into my Sunday best and taken to Sunday School at the little white clapboard Methodist Church on South Acoma Street in Englewood. We learned our Bible verses and as many of the other things that little girls and boys were supposed to learn about their religion as our teachers could cram into us.

On the other days I went to school. Church was one thing. School was another thing. We were expected to participate in both, and what we learned in Sunday School was presumed to influence the way we behaved elsewhere. but the two institutions were separate.

By the time I got to college I had developed an interest in political science and was trying to figure out how governments work. Formal religion was not a specific part of running the city or the state or the country. I do remember, years later, how scared many people were when John Kennedy ran for President. "Oh my," they said, "the Catholic Church will take us over. The Pope will be President." As we all know, it did not happen but it s a good example of the basic fear most Americans had and still have of combining church and state. Only now we are not afraid of the Pope, but of the Religious Right.

I suppose we knew the kind of religion, if any, our Presidents practiced, but it was a private matter, But there is nothing private about the religious beliefs of this one.

Gimme the good old days.

Richard Cohen has finally found the words I have been hunting for. "It occurs to me that the God so often discussed nowadays seems as dependent on the government as a welfare mother. For some reason the Almighty needs government assistance to make His presence known. Either the schools must have prayer or government buildings must have a religious reminder, say the Ten Commandments -- or else He will be banished from our lives or our consciousnessl"

The most recent church/state battle, of course, is over the 5,280-lb. granite monument containing the Ten Commandments which, until last week, stood in the rotunda of the state judicial building in Montgomery, Alabama. The Chief Justice defied all eight of his fellow judges, Alabama's Attorney General and the Supreme Court when he refused to comply with a federal ruling that the religious artifact was inappropriate in a court of law. It was finally moved to a back room and the Chief Justice is looking for a job.

That two and a half ton monument makes our Grand Junction Ten Commandments Monument disagreement pretty minor. But the principle is the same.

When are we going to learn that church and government cannot be peaceful bedfellows? Throughout history they have been a fatal mix. I'm not talking about people with deep spiritual belief. Our problem is with those who believe they have the right to force their religious beliefs on all the rest of us , including religious statues and pledges of allegiance under God in school.

Even Cal Thomas, former vice-president of Moral Majority is beginning to see the light -- "If the ultimate question is how best for God's followers to interest more people in Him and His message, then the ultimate answer ought to come from internal, not external things. . . It's a conflict, not only between church and state, but between God and man. "

Cohen writes, " I have to wonder about a God that is so dependent on government for his virtual existence that secular laws could virtually obliterate his presence, or who needs the help of lawmakers to assert his place in our lives."

Hmmm. Sounds like something I might have taken home from that little church in Englewood one Sunday morning. Maybe that little church explains why I believe so strongly in the separation of church and state.