Gallup: Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World

[Bradskii]

I don't believe there truly is such a thing as a peaceful transfer of power, just a change in nominal leadership pursuing the same basic program under a different heading.

No, this will be a different 'programme'. This is a decision on whether the US remains a democratic republic or becomes a theocracy. It's a simple question: Do you want others to decide or do you want a say in the matter?

The bill of rights was mentioned earlier. Do you know how that came about? States voted on it. Do you know who proposed the rights? Men who were voted into their positions. Do you know how amendments to the constitutions are made? People vote yay or nay. Do you know why you have freedom of religion? It was passed by a vote.

Now we're talking about changing the whole system into one that might take away your freedom of religion. Again, do you want to have a say in that?

 

[Fervent]

No, this will be a different 'programme'. This is a decision on whether the US remains a democratic republic or becomes a theocracy. It's a simple question: Do you want others to decide or do you want a say in the matter?

I go along to get along. The stripes of my oppressor aren't all that interesting to me.

The bill of rights was mentioned earlier. Do you know how that came about? States voted on it. Do you know who proposed the rights? Men who were voted into their positions. Do you know how amendments to the constitutions are made? People vote yay or nay. Do you know why you have freedom of religion? It was passed by a vote.

I seem to recall a couple of wars involved.

Now we're talking about changing the whole system into one that might take away your freedom of religion. Again, do you want to have a say in that?

I don't think theocratic governance is the sole threat to my freedom of religion, especially when we've already got secularists who want government to wield the power to destroy against religious institutions and we have laws that appear to target specifically religious political activities.

 

[Bradskii]

There's a difference between judging people and ideologies. And belief systems are far more relevant than you give credit for, as they inform character and competence. But then again, your judgment is more or less arbitrary so why should anyone care how you judge them?

My judgement is based on what people do. Not what they say they believe in. And the ideology?

You know, if there was one single ideology, one coherent belief in a god, one all encompassing set of moral rules that everyone held to then there'd be strong chance that I'd be an adherent to whatever 'religion' that was. But there isn't. There are multiple religions. There are literally hundreds of denominations within those religions. There are countless 'ideals' based on those religions that say 'this is the way we are to live!' And countless teachers and philosophers from the last few thousand years that all have different ideas on that matter. And I am to believe that because I was born at a specific time and in a specific place that the one denomination of this one religion just happened to be the right path? I should ignore all the others? That they don't count?

You just gotta be kidding me. And that was what I thought at a very early age. Simply because it was so obvious that a child could see it.

So I do judge your 'ideology'. I do judge your religion. I judge it against literally everything else that I have experienced. I judge it against everything I have read. Against all the people I have encountered. By the actions of people who say that they follow that religion. How it 'informs their character'. I've done this for decades. Listened and tried to learn. So you might not like my judgement. But listen up, it's a very long way indeed from being arbitrary.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that.

That "truth" requires "evidence". Of course, I will.

Your famous evidence, I suppose.

I should have been more clear, I was speaking of my ancestors and the chain leading to my Christianity. We don't have records of the peasants going back 1400 years, but when I can trace them it is in the baptismal records. They're all getting baptized at a couple days old.

And by privileging a particular religious persuasion, such restrictions are in violation of the spirit of the establishment clause.

No one is being privileged. All must keep their religion to themselves on the clock and all can pray (or read scripture) in the breakroom if they like.

 

[Bradskii]

I go along to get along.

Yet you immediately say this:

...we've already got secularists who want government to wield the power to destroy against religious institutions and we have laws that appear to target specifically religious political activities.

So I call bulldust. You say that you're worried about some mysterious secularists who want to destroy religion and target religious activities but hey, you're not interested in having a say about your country being run by a religion which in many ways is directly opposed to yours. Why not go along to get along?

You're arguing opposing views in the very same post. I'm impressed.

 

[Fervent]

That "truth" requires "evidence". Of course, I will.

That you have such truth, when all you really have is a paltry substitute that never escapes its ignorant foundation.

I should have been more clear, I was speaking of my ancestors and the chain leading to my Christianity. We don't have records of the peasants going back 1400 years, but when I can trace them it is in the baptismal records. They're all getting baptized at a couple days old.

Ah, it appeared a generalization of some sort.

No one is being privileged. All must keep their religion to themselves on the clock and all can pray (or read scripture) in the breakroom if they like.

Odd, that sure sounds like atheists are being privileged in their religious perspective since they face no such censure in making disclosures. And no, I am not saying atheism is a religion.

 

[Sportsballfan]

So I call bulldust.

So are we just allowed to make little adjustments and that’s allowed?

If I claimed Trump was “grabbing them in their purse”, would that be fine.

 

[BCP1928]

Sounds like you're telling Christians how to live their lives. Normative ethics is a part of public life, so why should Christians sit silently while baseless "moral"s run rampant instead of holding firm to the normativity of their ethical principles?

You can advocate for them all you like., but your morals are no more normative on the rest of us than those of any other faith groups. The other thing to remember is that the laws of a secular state like the US are not moral statements. They can be and usually are informed by the moral sentiments of "we, the people," but the laws in themselves are not morals, just a set of rules we agree to live by, whatever our morals may be.

Why should any teacher of any faith be allowed to lead her students in a sectarian prayer which may be offensive to some of them?

 

[Fervent]

You can advocate for them all you like., but your morals are no more normative on the rest of us than those of any other faith groups. The other thing to remember is that the laws of a secular state like the US are not moral statements. They can be and usually are informed by the moral sentiments of "we, the people," but the laws in themselves are not morals, just a set of rules we agree to live by, whatever our morals may be.

Sure, but that's not really here nor there. It's rather ironic that so many "secularists" seem to think that their values should be normative on everyone else, while objecting to Christians expecting their values to be normative.

Why should any teacher of any faith be allowed to lead her students in a sectarian prayer which may be offensive to some of them?

Did you miss the qualifier "voluntary"? Do you believe in the heckler's veto in general, or just in the case of expressions of faith?

 

[BCP1928]

Sure, but that's not really here nor there. It's rather ironic that so many "secularists" seem to think that their values should be normative on everyone else, while objecting to Christians expecting their values to be normative.

Did you miss the qualifier "voluntary"? Do you believe in the heckler's veto in general, or just in the case of expressions of faith?

A group of children under the authority of a teacher are not really in a position to give informed consent in such matters.

Here's another example: The famous Texas football game prayer case, Santa Fe School District v. Doe. The practice was to have a student-led prayer over the loudspeakers at football games, always an Evangelical Protestant prayer. A group of parents sued the school--no, not "secularists, Catholics and Mormons. Early on in the proceedings, they offered a compromise, that the prayer should be rotated around the different faith groups present in the student body but the district turned them down flat. It had to be an Evangelical Protestant prayer or nothing. In the end, they got nothing.

 

[Fervent]

A group of children under the authority of a teacher are not really in a position to give informed consent in such matters.

I don't think you're giving children enough credit here.

Here's another example: The famous Texas football game prayer case, Santa Fe School District v. Doe. The practice was to have a student-led prayer over the loudspeakers at football games, always an Evangelical Protestant prayer. A group of parents sued the school--no, not "secularists, Catholics and Mormons. Early on in the proceedings, they offered a compromise, that the prayer should be rotated around the different faith groups present in the student body but the district turned them down flat. It had to be an Evangelical Protestant prayer or nothing. In the end, they got nothing.

Well, that's a failing on the part of the district since it's de facto establishment. Why do you think this is relevant?

 

[Hans Blaster]

No, I wrote of religious participation in the public square. Politics is merely a portion of that.

Then what on the gravitationally bound ball of rock that is the Earth, are you talking about by "public square"?

It's called building rapport/relationship. Teaching is far more than just conveying academic instruction, and to properly motivate and manage classrooms it requires the ability to engage the students to some degree both in their private lives and our lives. While there is a theoretical amount of tolerance for religious disclosure, even answering student questions can land us in hot water if some parent decides to object.

There are appropriate and non-appropriate questions and ways to reply to any inquries. Questions about a teacher or students religion would seem to lie in the non-appropriate category. (If they asked about your sex life it certainly would be a question you could shut down with some sort of "that's not appropriate for discussion in class" response.)

McCulloch certainly is about federalism, but the reasoning transfers(the power to tax is the power to destroy) in such a way that tax exemption is part and parcel to true separation of church and state.

I said nothing about taxing churches. Form 990 is filed by non-profits detaining their income and expenses and officers. It is filed by organizations that *don't* pay taxes.

 

[FireDragon76]

American government has been secularized for 200 years. American society has been rapidly secularizing for the last 50-60 years. The American *people* have been secularizing for the last 20 years. With that, church attendance and religiosity has declined in America.

I disagree. Religion served a civil, ceremonial function in government and society, such as congressional chaplains, and from the beginning, none of the Founders were hostile to the civil institution of religion, that wasn't how they thought of the construction of the 1st Ammendment. French style secularism wasn't part of it.

 

[BCP1928]

I don't think you're giving children enough credit here.

And if they have the courage of their convictions they can go stand in the hall until you're done, right?

Well, that's a failing on the part of the district since it's de facto establishment. Why do you think this is relevant?

Because it's what can happen when sectarian religious observances take place in schools.

 

[Fervent]

Then what on the gravitationally bound ball of rock that is the Earth, are you talking about by "public square"?

Public events, public employment, that sort of thing.

There are appropriate and non-appropriate questions and ways to reply to any inquries. Questions about a teacher or students religion would seem to lie in the non-appropriate category. (If they asked about your sex life it certainly would be a question you could shut down with some sort of "that's not appropriate for discussion in class" response.)

There are appropriate conversation topics, sure. But personal disclosure isn't something that should be off limits, provided it doesn't completely derail the lesson. That religion is somehow treated as a third rail is exactly part of the problem, because open polite discussion of such matters seems necessary for a pluralistic society to develop consideration for diversity of belief. Requiring it to be a secretive endeavor in no way seems reasonable to me.

I said nothing about taxing churches. Form 990 is filed by non-profits detaining their income and expenses and officers. It is filed by organizations that *don't* pay taxes.

Ah, I misunderstood. What benefit is such a form supposed to produce that isn't already covered by current oversite practices?

 

[FireDragon76]

To an extent, but it's been a long, slow, process towards an increasingly fractured society.

Yeah, we're seeing a shift towards more peer-based control systems and a shame-paradigm rather than a guilt one that traditional authorities made their bread and butter. In regard to religiosity, Christianity in particular, it calls for a re-contextualization of the gospel message away from the traditional guilt and punishment, to one that emphasizes the freedom from shame and the endurance of public humiliation Jesus went through on the cross. But too many of the religious authorities are either trying to abandon all principles and bend to public sentiments, or embracing a self-image that explains public irrelevance and dwindling church attendance as part of the cost of dicipleship.

Yes, more or less that's what is needed.

The issue today isn't about enforcing guilt and moral duties so much as the fact that many people live under a kind of social erasure, on the margins of society, with lives judged insiginificant. That's related to one of the things that both Tom Holland and John Vervaeke point out was the original sociological revolution of early Christianity: the transformation of non-persons into persons.

 

[BCP1928]

Public events, public employment, that sort of thing.

There are appropriate conversation topics, sure. But personal disclosure isn't something that should be off limits, provided it doesn't completely derail the lesson. That religion is somehow treated as a third rail is exactly part of the problem, because open polite discussion of such matters seems necessary for a pluralistic society to develop consideration for diversity of belief. Requiring it to be a secretive endeavor in no way seems reasonable to me.

You are not required to conceal your faith from your students.

Ah, I misunderstood. What benefit is such a form supposed to produce that isn't already covered by current oversite practices?

 

[Fervent]

And if they have the courage of their convictions they can go stand in the hall until you're done, right?

You're making this sound far more nefarious than what I'm proposing, because even the coach/teacher going to a separate location and allowing students to join them is not allowed. In fact, I am relatively certain there was even a recent case where a coach was fired for praying by the flag pole with no student involvement before football games.

Because it's what can happen when sectarian religious observances take place in schools.

And when such violations occur, there are the structures in place to deal with them. But that's no reason to relegate the practice.

 

[Fervent]

You are not required to conceal your faith from your students.

It's a grey area, with most school districts at least in my area being quick to suppress any such disclosure. There is an allowance for "discrete" displays of faith, but what that means is not well defined.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I seem to recall a couple of wars involved.

There weren't.

The US Constitution was not written during or after a war. It was written (1787) in a nation at peace with an ineffectual government (the Articles of Confederation). There wasn't a war in 1789 when the First Congress under the new Constitution sent the Bill of Rights to the states for ratification. In fact the only amendments directly tied to a war were the 13th amendment (outlawing slavery) sent by Congress for ratification before Johnston surrendered to Sherman and the 26th amendment (18 year voting age) rapidly drafted by Congress and ratified by the states in 1971 during the Vietnam War under the theory "old enough to be drafted, old enough to vote".