my burg

Joseph Bottum explains well the American experiment, namely, an ongoing and needed tension between a secular government and a moral populace informed by religious principle.  He writes this in his recent article for First Things ... "The United States as it naturally wants to be—what we might call the platonic ideal of America—contains a tension we must be careful not to resolve. From its founding, the nation has always been something like a school of Enlightenment rationalists aswim in an ocean of Christian faith. And how shall the fish hate the water wherein they live? Or the water hate the fish?"  Read the full article here .   

On April 15, 2010, United States District Court Judge Barbara Crabb, for the Western District of Wisconsin, struck down the National Day of Prayer statute, 36 U.S.C. § 119, as violating the Establishment Clause. Judge Crabb ruled that the statute serves no secular purpose, but rather calls the nation to engage in a religious exercise – prayer. This decision makes perfect sense from a secular viewpoint. It is logical in a pluralistic society which must accommodate atheists as well as all stripes of religious beliefs. But if U.S. leaders cannot call upon people to pray or acknowledge any kind of higher power, then this is problematic if in fact there is a Power who can (or does) bring blessing or disaster. So in a sense atheism has been "established" as our guiding governmental philosophy. In other words, we cannot say for certain that a religious exercise "serves no secular purpose", when in fact it may be supportive of the national welfare. To so rule against thi...

Here's an excellent point made by George Weigel in "The erosion of religious freedom "... Religious freedom, rightly understood, cannot be reduced to freedom of worship. Religious freedom includes the right to preach and evangelize, to make religiously informed moral arguments in the public square, and to conduct the affairs of one's religious community without undue interference from the state. If religious freedom only involves the freedom to worship, then, as noted above, there is "religious freedom" in Saudi Arabia, where Bibles and evangelism are forbidden but expatriate Filipino laborers can attend Mass in the U.S. embassy compound in Riyadh.