Defending the Separation of Church and State
<p>I confess I am a Christian, specifically a Roman Catholic. And I am concerned like many other people about the efforts afoot in the United States to impose religion and specifically some form of Christianity on the people of this country. The history of Roman Catholics in the United States provides ample evidence of the danger of a close relationship between a specific form of religion and the state. In large part the establishment of Catholic Schools in this country was a direct response to the "Christian" public schools. You will find the following two articles helpful for discussing and defending the separation of church and state. The first article, <i>Moses Didn't Write the Constitution</i> by Thom Hartmann is available <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0303-30.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. The second article, <i>Our Godless Constitution by Brooke Allen</i> is available <a href="http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050221&s=allen" target="_blank">here</a>. Let's be clear as Allen points out, "Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent."</p>