Ten Commandments case appealed to U.S. Supreme Court

Let's talk about various types of religion.
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lukpac
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Postby lukpac » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:23 am

See Constitution for civics refresher

The United States is not a Christian nation. It seems sensible to begin there, since it's the crux of the dispute.

Yes, the men who invented the nation were mostly Christians. Yes, too, Christianity is the nation's majority religion.

But the point is, this is not a theocracy, not a nation where the rulings of holy men carry official weight. The Framers made that impossible when they wrote a First Amendment forbidding the government from endorsing any religion.

If you want to know why this is a good thing, you have only to recall how tenderly the Taliban once ruled Afghanistan. Or look to Nigeria, where religious leaders are debating whether an adulterous woman should be stoned to death. To consider those sad-sack nations is to be convinced that separating the functions of church and state was one of the brighter things the founders ever did.

This is not complicated stuff. To the contrary, it is the stuff of eighth-grade civics.

Roy Moore evidently skipped class that day. If a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll is to be believed, many of us did.

Moore, as you surely know, is the now-suspended chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who, two years ago, surreptitiously installed a granite monument to the Ten Commandments into the rotunda of the state judicial building. In so doing, Moore sparked a church-state standoff that climaxed this week with Christians praying and protesting on the steps of the building while a work crew carried out a federal court order to remove the statue.

According to the aforementioned poll, 77 percent of us disapprove of that court order. Supporters of ''Roy's rock'' seem united in their belief that, in removing the monument, the government demonstrates again its hostility toward believers and belief.

I find myself wondering where they got the building permit for that persecution complex. Are we talking about the same federal government whose legislative bodies begin their sessions with prayer? Whose money carries the legend, ''In God we trust?'' Whose official calendar recognizes neither Yom Kippur nor Ramadan, but gives a day off with pay for Christmas?

The fact is, government has traditionally interpreted with equal doses of liberality and practicality the religious restrictions placed upon it by the First Amendment. It has not ignored the primacy of faith in modern life or its central role in our history. Rather, it has sought to walk a fine line between that which is constitutionally permissible and that which is not. Between acknowledging faith and advocating it.

The problem here is not that government hates Christians but that some Christians hate that line. They are the same folks who have never forgiven the Supreme Court for ruling that schoolchildren cannot be forced to begin their day with prayer. Now they see -- or think they see -- another instance of government stomping their beliefs.

One wonders how they would feel if a Judge Muhammad had sneaked in one night to install a monument carrying a few choice words from the Koran. Might they not be offended that he was pushing upon them an alien religion?

Judge Moore's supporters will say, of course, that it's not the same because this is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. In other words, what he did was OK because it's ''our'' country.

But the Constitution doesn't just protect church from state and vice versa. It was also designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority -- from the indifference with which the majority sometimes wields power. Because the majority doesn't always see how others might be affected. To tell the truth, it doesn't always care.

From where I sit, Roy Moore isn't fit to judge a dog show. He is a zealot cynically manipulating a powerful mixture of grievance and faith. It's frightening to know that 77 percent of the people support him.

Thank goodness the Constitution does not.

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Postby lukpac » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:25 am

This was written by Tom Teepen, although not credited at the only link I found.

Activists ignore sources of law

That Ten Commandments megalith in the Alabama judicial building has been discreetly tucked out of the way while what remains of the legal argument over its display meanders to its conclusion. But before we leave the matter, one loose end should be knotted up.
In the Alabama confrontation, as in similar contretemps in lesser teacups, the claim has been repeatedly made that the Ten Commandments are (choose one) the source, foundation, bedrock, cornerstone of American law and therefore deserve standing in the public, and specifically the political, arena.
This assertion would be a strong point in favor of their government-sanctioned promotion, with history trumping church-state separation, except for the awkward fact that it isn't true.
American law overwhelmingly derives, as you would imagine, from English common law and especially from Sir William Blackstone's magisterial "Commentaries On the Law of England," a legal best seller in the crucial period when the American Revolution was gestating.
And all that in turn owes more than a little to Roman law, particularly to its seminal Twelve Tables that codified customary law, and to the Germanic Code that followed it. Somewhere way back there, the Ten Commandments played into the stream of thought that became Western jurisprudence, but then so did Hammurabi's Code from Babylonia and the civil law of ancient Greek city-states.
And when the commandments are displayed in government buildings in a context that acknowledges the law's many sources, the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted their presence.
The crucial difference in Alabama is that the monument there was a deliberate, in-your- face bid to use government endorsement to promote religion by a Christian-activist judge and by supporters who want the government to practice their religion for them and do their proselytizing.
The folks rallying in an effort to keep the monument in place were not historians and legal scholars but evangelical Christians. It could not be more plain what the game was.
The commandments are only in part a legal code. The first five are pointedly religious instructions. The rest almost go without saying -- prohibitions on murder, theft, adultery, perjury. Those are all but universally held, kin to the natural law that Saint Thomas Aquinas argued was common to Christian and non-Christian cultures alike and equally.
Even so, the commandments are not perfectly unexceptionable, as casual conservation routinely assumes. The Jewish and Christian versions are slightly different and Catholic and Protestant versions differ as well.
Those differences might seem meaningless to the indifferent, but they, and especially the commentaries that have flowed from them, bear quite distinct theologies to their adherents. Faith matters.
To the degree that the commandments did influence American law, then the law itself is a grander monument to them than any slab of stone can match. In the public spaces where we all gather to do our governing together, that would seem to be monument enough.
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:46 am

Yes, the men who invented the nation were mostly Christians.


Well, you know how I feel about that assertion. :) Good stuff other than that, though.

And when the commandments are displayed in government buildings in a context that acknowledges the law's many sources, the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted their presence.


That's a good point. It's not the presence of the Commandments that's the problem, it's the context. The Alabama monument had no context, it just stood there and said, "In this building, you're going to be judged by Biblical standards." Which is blatantly unconstitutional.

Put up a copy of the Commandments alongside Hammurabi's Code and the Magna Carta and so forth, however, and then it says, "Here's one of the many sources that American law draws from." (I was gonna say "evolved from," but why tweak the Bible-thumpers any more than necessary?) That's perfectly fine as far as I can tell.

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Postby Grant » Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:58 am

In the Bible, it tells all Christians to go out and spread the word of the salvation of Jesus Christ.

Somehow, these radical fundamentalists believe that they can save their world if only everyone would accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and saviour. That is why they tend to force their beleifs on everyone.

I find that many fundamentalist Christians once lived evil, depraved lives. You know, it's the same thing as former smokers being the most radical anti-smokers. To these people, though, there is no grey areas in life, just black and white, right and wrong.

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Postby Grant » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:04 am

Also, this push for God (of Abraham) everywhere came directly from the cold war. People believed that socialists and communists were trying to destroy our nation, so some people got the bright idea to counter it with God. The Mary Madalyne O'Hare corut ruling didn't help these people's fears. These people magically believe that crime, sex, and murder would stop if only everyone followed what they believe the Bible teaches.

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Postby balthazar » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:11 am

These people magically believe that crime, sex, and murder would stop if only everyone followed what they believe the Bible teaches.


Have they read their Bibles? The Bible is full of crimes, sex, and murders. And that's before you're even done reading Genesis.
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Postby Grant » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:14 am

One more thing. Jesus himself only advised people of how to act. It was his Apostles who went radical after Jesus' death. Jesus kind of tells us to keep our own lives in order instead of worrying about everybody else. Jesus spoke about following false prophets (religious or governmental leaders). He spoke against lying and treating your neighbor badly. He spoke against being hypocritical and judjing others. He gave people a basic blueprint for living right. But, he spoke very little about these things when he was alive. Again, it was the radicals who took it too far. One apostle hated women, John, I think it was, and some scholars believed he was actually gay. One was a crimminal and spent a lot of time in prision.

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Postby Grant » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:21 am

balthazar wrote:
These people magically believe that crime, sex, and murder would stop if only everyone followed what they believe the Bible teaches.


Have they read their Bibles? The Bible is full of crimes, sex, and murders. And that's before you're even done reading Genesis.


I once tried to pose this question about one of the warrior kings in the old testement in bible study class and was pretty much told to shut up.

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Postby balthazar » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:30 am

One apostle hated women, John, I think it was, and some scholars believed he was actually gay.


I think it was Paul who supposedly hated women, though there is evidence to suggest that he was married.

In any case, you bring up a valid point: a lot of Jesus' teachings did indeed address keeping your own life in order. The evangelism and spreading of the message increased greatly after the Ascension, as addressed in Acts.

One was a crimminal and spent a lot of time in prision.


Many of the Apostles spent time in prison, including Peter, as did John of Patmos, the writer of Revelation. However, they were imprisoned mostly for following Jesus' teachings in a world that was very hostile to their ideas.

One thing that should be considered is that much of Christian doctrine is actually based on Paul's epistles. When the New Testament was canonized, the the church purposely puts the Pauline epistles before the general epistles, and also purposely put Romans as the first epistle, to support the primacy of the church at Rome. Reading through the epistles, you have the impression that Paul is presenting all these ideas, and then the other epistles present clarification.

In contrast, another translation project, the Hebraic Roots Version, places the general epistles first, then the Pauline epistles. This creates a different impression, a case of "this is what you need to worry about, but Paul's going to talk about these other things, too."

To these people, though, there is no grey areas in life, just black and white, right and wrong.


Again, they must not be reading their Bibles. The problem I have with Bible-thumpers is they have a tendency to cite whatever backs their ideas, and conveniently ignore whatever scripture contradicts their ideas.