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From: heahd@tellab1.UUCP (Dan Wood)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Federal Attack on Religion?
Message-ID: <166@tellab1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-May-84 10:14:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: tellab1.166
Posted: Mon May 21 10:14:12 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 22-May-84 08:31:51 EDT
References: <343@teldata.UUCP>
Organization: Tellabs, Inc., Lisle, Ill.
Lines: 33


   With reference to the recent debates in Congress over school prayer and
religious club's access to public school facilities, I don't belive that the
federal government should matain laws forbidding prayer or other religious
activities in public schools, on the other hand, I also don't belive that laws
(i.e., constitutional amendents) should be enacted to sanction such practices.
The reason for this is the historical tendency of christians to interpret
freedom of religion to mean freedom for christians to force their views of the
cosmos on other peoples. I know in my heart (and from personal experience)
that there are teachers out there that would take a constititutional amendment
granting the *right* to pray in school as a mandate to make every child in
their class pray to the christian god rather then allowing each child to pray
to their own god (or goddess) in the manner that they see fit.

   The author of the original article on this subject should explore more
closely the life and thoughts of the principal author of the document he
quotes. Thomas Jefferson (also the author of Virginia's Statute For Religious
Freedom), in his efforts to make religious freedom a basic tenent of this
government, was concerned the christians (or some other religious group that
might grow as powerful as the christians) would try to make their own
religion the officially recognized religion of the state, and thus establish a
tyranny as vicious as any political one.  To paraphrase the great man in his
Notes on Virginia, he didn't care if a man had one god or ten and he didn't
think it was anybody else's business either, especially not the government's.

   The point I'm trying to make (I can hear a lot of you sighing "It's about
time") is that the federal government was more right than wrong in the actions
sighted.  


                                       Dan Wood
Editorial replys by responsible groups or individuals are welcomed.
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