God In Politics: Part I

This is something that I have given a lot of thought about. The separation between church and state. Something that is fought over a great amount. To me, it is just a fear of conforming. Honestly, that seems to be what drives our nation into most of our actions. There are a great amount of reasons for this. Simple history. A people sent to colonize an unknown territory became restless with what their leaders were trying to implement on them. So, they rebelled, won, and, after many years of hammering out some very rugged details, finally collaborated enough to call themselves a nation. This nation is known as the United States.

A heart touching story. The colonists, the people who could almost be called the rejects of Great Britain’s society, and the people Great Britain thought they had the most control over, said “No” and stood for their beliefs, and became independent of their oppressors. Now, however, arose an even greater challenge. Making a sustainable country for themselves. What could they do to not only rise to the challenge of being independent from Great Britain, but becoming a country that could be counted as “better” than Great Britain (I use better very cautiously, knowing that it is indeed a word of opinion and have used it only for lack of better terms).

One of the ways they would do this was to refute the common practices among the European countries, one of which was a dominant religion. While Great Britain was a Catholic country, the colonists chose more of a protestant Christian path. However, before the Revolution, Britain had tried to push Catholicism onto the Colonists. Results? As America had started to come together as a country, and the Constitution was written, Virginia (I believe it was Virginia, forgive me, for I haven’t done my research on this part. Please feel free to correct me) proposed the bill of rights, the first ten amendments of the Constitution, a rather elegant document. The first amendment that this document includes CLEARLY states the establishment clause. If anybody doesn’t know, the Establishment clause, put in simple terms, states that America will not allow one religion to control its government.

Now, let’s examine this. Why would a country that was, at the time, very Christian, implement such a law, restricting what they believe to not dominate what would be their country? There are a great number of ways to answer this:

1.       Separating from Great Britain was a successful and very noteworthy action. But, in order to fully separate themselves from the power that once oppressed them, they must also concede to not mimic the actions that Britain implemented. One of these ways was to allow a freedom of religion, whereas Britain didn’t. If the colonists were to establish a base religion, they would follow down the path they were trying so hard to divulge themselves from.

2.       In Christian values, a relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ is a key aspect. This relationship must be a self-chosen path and must be very personal. If the colonist were to establish a religion and “force” all other colonist to choose Jesus as their savior, the personal choice aspect would be taken from the equation, and therefore, would result in fake Christianity across the nation (We do suffer greatly from that, more so then most would like to think).

3.       The colonists were a small group of people, compared to what the other nations across the world were. Now, this is just my opinion, but I believe that in order to invoke the idea of more people joining us, we must leave room open for all religion, to bring more people to us. Some may argue that it was to help convert people, but I believe that this reason was purely political, unfortunately.

Though there are many reasons that this first amendment would be implemented, a good amount of the cause of its implementation could be contributed to the fear of conforming.

To state clearly, I, being of Christian faith, do not believe in the establishment clause as evil. I believe that the path the fear of nonconforming has taken us is a path that was beneficial to what God wanted in our country. My rant here isn’t to criticize the amendment or what it stands for. This was simply a recap of how it came to be in my eyes.

Because the establishment clause isn’t the point of discussion here. The main point behind this blog is to bring attention to what I believe is the “blown out of proportion establishment clause.” Another name for that would be separation between church and state. I believe that the Establishment Clause’s interpretations were taken a little far, and that if we found a way to take these interpretations “back a step,” that we could help our country.

Forgive me, for I sound very vague on this point. I promise  you, if you have interest in continuing on hearing this, that I will explain much more clearly in my next part of this series, God in Politics: Part II.