The Washington Post On Faith
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/georgetown-on-faith/post/where-does-church-end-and-state-begin/2011/10/04/gIQAzy2RNL_blog.html
This article is written with a big serving of sarcasm, mostly directed toward US political figures who have tried to use their religion as a reason for doing something some find unconstitutional. It is very entertaining, and also intriguing if you look at it with an open mind.
The US is supposed to have (and I would say a majority of the time, does) a separation of Church and State. So I can see how some people get quite frustrated when political figure heads, voted into power by the American public, are making decisions based off their religious values and NOT based off the constitution. People are not voted into power because of their religion. Therefore, when someone takes power, they should not get to pick and choose which laws to pass/duties to follow based off their own beliefs. Berlinerblau does a good job giving a few examples of past experiences when people have tried to do something because of their faith, and normally these people have been told "no, no, I don't care that your faith says otherwise..your job says do this" so it's nice to know the separation is being upheld.
This just made me think of how Hinduism and Buddhism are so much more than religions, they are lifestyles, that there is no way church and state could ever be separated. I think this might make laws/rules/regulations/etc a lot easier to decide on but I can't decide if it's 'fair' or if I would like it. Probably not since I don't really have any certain religion I adhere to.
It's also interesting to think about how the first amendment protects against freedom of speech, but by requiring political figures to not base any decisions off their religion, is that somehow going against that amendment too? I think it's fair to say that religion influences a lot of people's morals and values and opinions...so are we saying that political figures need to base their morals, values, etc off of somewhere else? How could a person even control for that since those things are typically ingrained in a person by the time they are college-aged?
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