Everybody should be a proper Baptist, like me, but many would be offended if so ordered or if it seemed like they were favoring those who are Baptists. Many are of other religious bents and I would not like them being paid with my taxes to promote beliefs which my understanding of the teachings of my Lord say would lead to their eternal condemnation.

It just ain’t right.

The simplest solution is the one written into the Constitution that Congress will not have power to make any law establishing a religion or forbidding the practice of any religion.

Being humans we can’t leave it at that, we always have to find out just how far we can push it. Many say, “We ought to be able to do this or that because there’s more of us than there are of them.”

That’s the kind of thinking that led to the ethnic and religious cleansing in places like Kosovo, Iraq, Germany, Spain, Ireland… to name a few.

(I have some ancestors who were run out of Ireland for not being Catholic. Of course my ancestors have been run out of many a place and always blamed it on the intollerance of other people. Rumor has it that they just didn’t bathe often enough or wouldn’t leave the other men’s women alone and the other reasons were just excuses.)

What scares me is that freedom of religion is in the Constitution, public education is not in the Constitution. If we don’t work to get along better, we’ll either drop freedom of religion or public education.

Both paths are unacceptable.

David for avoiding societal suicide

Of course it does. There are legitimate restrictions. If you are supposed to be teaching Algebra, you should not be preaching the teachings of Buddah. Not because I worry about the teachings of the Buddah, but there is a time and place for all times and people are being paid to teach certain subjects.

It would be wrong to interrupt a History lesson to pray to the east for five minutes. People can work around that by having a planning period then, though.

Those are obvious restrictions, or they should be obvious. The less legitimate ones happen when some judge signs off on a consent decree which says teachers will not be allowed to bow their heads prior to a meal–if that actually happened.

It doesn’t actually stop people from praying. It simply says the government can not tell the students when, where, how to pray.

This is actually a good thing. Imagine someone who you would not want telling your children how and to whom to pray being the one doing so.

David for freedom

I, too, find it ironic that you would knock others’ anonymity while hiding behind a screen name yourself.

I don’t use my real name >anywhere

This site is a lot like a council meeting.

A place for all to vent (GRIPE) about what annoys us.

Thanks to North Escambia and the Town of Century for allowing it.