Saturday, June 5, 2004
I have always been sympathetic to issues of separation of Church and State. As a nominal practitioner of a minority tradition and a supporter of the use of reason as a path to progress I am particularly so. On the other hand, I recognize, more and more as I get older, the role religion plays as a part of the fabric of society, and certainly in the historical progress of Western Civilization.
So I've become more and more uncomfortable with the sometimes over-the-top anti-religious efforts of groups like the ACLU, who seem to have an agenda beyond what is necessary to simply achieve the balance of separation necessary to preserve a secular government. Religion and a functioning church infrastructure serve as a necessary counter-balance to the power of government. They provide another loyalty base that prevents government from becoming too all-powerful. While this can go too far (witness areas of the Middle East today, for instance), a "Church" is a part of the structure of society that provides a check to out of control secular authority. Is it any wonder that elements on the extreme Left are so hostile to religion? It keeps them from imposing their Socialist Revolution on the rest of us. Watch the development of Europe and the EU for the way in which Europe begins eroding its democracy and losing its respect for individual liberty at the same time it becomes more and more secular - substituting statements of intent on paper, international declarations, panels, committees and courts as a new religion complete with clergy, scripture and College of Cardinals - only this new Church will have more power than the Popes of old could ever dream of.
Government along with the structures that balance Government's power - Churches, Civic Organizations, Unions, etc... - are necessary for a functioning democracy, particularly one which knows where its limits are, and that respects the rights of the minority against the depradations of the majority. You need someone looking out for you and your interests when the mob is out to get you, or when they're looking to pass laws accoring to the latest fad that are beyond any right of government to pass.
Cathy Young addresses the way the LA seal case crosses the line into an attack on religion that exposes the true agenda of much of the "separation of church and state" crowd. Boston Globe: Secularism gone awry in battle over LA's seal
The ACLU claimed that the cross, meant to symbolize the churches and Catholic missions that are such a large part of the county's history, represented "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the county government" and thus violated the constitutional prohibition on the establishment of religion. The seal, adopted in 1957, will be changed at huge public expense.
While I am disturbed by recent attempts to turn "secularism" -- the principle that religious beliefs should not be imposed on public policy -- into a dirty word, this is precisely the kind of thing that gives secularism a bad name.
To be fair, the argument that the cross stands for historical heritage rather than religious belief has also been used to defend far more dubious intrusions of religious symbolism into the public square, most notably the case of the Ten Commandments monument installed by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore at the Alabama State Judicial Building last year. But there are some crucial differences.
Under existing legal precedent, for instance, an image of the Ten Commandments in a court building is acceptable as long as it is accompanied by other images. A figure of Moses with the two tablets is part of a frieze at the US Supreme Court building -- along with the figures of other historical lawgivers, including Confucius and Hammurabi. The Ten Commandments sculpture in the Alabama courthouse stood alone.
By this standard, the cross on the offending seal certainly should have passed muster. The largest and central image on the seal is that of Pomona, ancient Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees. As some have caustically pointed out, no one has claims that her depiction endorses paganism...
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