Speaker Johnson: Separation of church, state ‘a misnomer’
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pushed back Tuesday on the belief that there should be separation between church and state on the U.S., arguing that the founding fathers wanted faith to be a “big part…
Boy do I love living surrounded by these loving christians.
Born too late to explore the earth, borth too early to explore the stars, born just in time to have my rights taken away by belivers in a bronze age supernatural death cult.
Fucking amazing.
That's a very positive outlook that humanity will survive to explore the stars without being killed by religious fascists.
You live in amazing times where we are inventing and learning new shit all the time. If you're not exploring now when that exploring is relatively very safe, you wouldn't be the one sailing off to the new world hundreds of years ago. People can be miserable or content in their own time, no matter what that time is.
Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
—Thomas Jefferson
When a religion is good, conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, apprehend, of its being a bad one.
—Benjamin Franklin
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/thomas-jefferson-religious-institutions/
I agree with your sentiment, but please don't spread misinformation regardless of intent.
Proper quote:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
(From your snopes link)
Didn't this religious asshole take an oath to uphold the constitution that literally decrees separation of church and state‽ Grounds for a firing.
Constitution only says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Jefferson coined the term in a letter regarding the 1A.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but in any case "separation of church and state" is how we have always interpreted it.
religious whackjobs in the government attempt to rebrand 'religion' to 'faith' in an attempt to claim all americans should suffer from it.
it will only cause me to hate 2 words instead of the one.
You should already hate faith. Faith is what the religious use to justify doing nothing themselves.
Hell, faith is the reason half of them are sitting around hoping for Armageddon...
Capital-F Faith is directly contrary to science and reason. It's believing things to be true without question or proof.
You can be spiritual and also be a logical person who listens to reason and science. But when you devote your entire worldview to Faith, then you should absolutely NOT be in a position to make decisions that affect other people's lives.
We really need to get these republicans out of office.
Kind of like “well regulated militia”, right Mr. Speaker? 🙄
That’s a Taliban thing to say.
Are you trying to equate the Catholic, Baptist, protestant, etc. church dictating governance as being no better than the concept of Sharia law?
That's how I'm interpreting your statement, and in that specific context, I fully agree...
Sharia isn't specific to Taliban, but whatever, I think I'm on the same page still :)
When they were in charge they weren't much better than the Taliban
They are indeed tryIng to enforce the same principles: no rights for women, no rights for non-straight people, etc... why do you think sharia is worse than what's happening in the US today?
Of course a guy who can't separate fapping from family also can't separate politics from religion.
American churches and religious organizations have secured themselves so much public funding and political campaign power this past couple decades he kind of isn't wrong: the separation detailed as important by many of the founders has been dumped.
Tax the FUCK Out of them if they think they have a say on govt
Nah, I think we should just 'manifest destiny' their properties.
Set aside for the moment that the Founding Fathers absolutely wanted there to be a separation between church and state because they had just come from a land (England) where the ruler (the King) was the leader of the church (Church of England) and where they saw the abuses this caused.
Would Johnson and all the other "no separation" folks really be fine with the government meddling with their faith? After all, if there's no separation between church and state then not only can the church influence the state, but the state can influence the church. Get rid of the separation and the federal government could decide which holidays you observe and in which ways. It could proclaim what the contents of the prayer books are and when/how you pray.
Would they be fine with all this?
Of course, they assume that they will be writing the rules, but would they accept it if someone else was? Perhaps I, a Jew, would declare that they can't eat pig products. (In reality, I'd never impose my religious beliefs on others, but let's say I did hypothetically speaking.) Perhaps a Muslim Government Religious Committee Member would add a few rules. As would a Buddhist. Heck, let's get atheists and satanists involved as well. I'm sure they would love to write some "religious rules" that the Christians nationalists would need to follow. Would Johnson and company happily go along with this because "no separation between church and state?"
Would they be fine with all this?
And in today's lesson, we will learn the term "double standards": yes they would be fine with this because they think they are the state, also they think they are basically god's will and anything contradicting that will be fought tooth and nail. IF they should ever see another religion even approach their level of power, then they will attempt everything in their power to restrict that religion's advances because they were always proponents of a separation of ( at least that other) religion and the state. Any inconsistencies in that worldview are not, as it may seem at first glance (or second [or third and all thereafter]) pure hypocrisy because it's obviously an ENTIRELY different situation when they are affected. As soon as their power is then consolidated again, separation of church and state shouldn't be taken THAT seriously anymore - it's not that important as long as the RIGHT religion is the state...
So…main character syndrome. Isn’t that a prerequisite to register Republican?
As always, they are the one's in power, and therefore assume they'll be the only one's writing the rules.
A better example than pork products might be abortion.
There are literally no Jewish groups that are anywhere near as hard-line on abortion as Christians are. And the pro-life crowd would be quite upset if the laws on abortion were written by either reform or conservative rabbis.
The problem with Mike Johnson's position is that once you get past the basics like "don't murder", religions disagree significantly on the specifics. For example, according to Orthodox Judaism, you must abort a fetus that's threatening the mothers life, while some Christians would call that murder.
There's no such thing as generic "faith based principles" to base a government on; at some point you simply have to pick which religions' principles you'll enshrine.
The reason for the abortion policy in Judaism is that Judaism sees the fetus as merely "potential life" and part of the woman's body until it is born. There are Jewish groups fighting against the Republicans' restrictive abortion bans because they are based on Christianity's views of the life of the fetus and infringe on Jewish views.
you must abort a fetus that’s threatening the mothers life, while some Christians would call that murder.
If the mother dies and the baby hasn't been born yet, then two people have died. Aborting a life threatening fetus is the only sane course of action, as you are not ending one life, you're saving those who can still be saved.
Without separation, the government could impose and anti hypocrisy clause when people claim religious freedom -- if the person claiming it has demonstrably and willfully gone against their religion's rules, they can't claim religious freedom for a different rule.
They would just change the argument again to "the founding fathers were Christian they had every intention of allowing Christian religion to inform government decisions. The founding fathers never were Muslim or Jewish nor did they enact any policy that originated from their respective religious books. So based on that history we only allow Christian laws to be made, anything else is unconstitutional."
/Vomit
They were deists though...
I would love to see what the rules are after all the major religions cooperate and build a new world order. I’d imagine it’d be something like “everyone is vegan now. Be nice to everyone. Except the Roma”.
Y'know, since the other theocracies around the world are so chill.
"Thomas Jefferson was wrong."
The separation of church and state doesn't require a separation of faith and state. Separation of faith and state wasn't Jeffersons point...
The house comes to consensus on all sorts of shit, often based on faith, while being composed of members of a variety of churches. Been that way for centuries, and can continue to be that way. The first amendment doesn't prohibit government from making laws based on faith or faith based values. It prohibits government from making laws respective to a church.
Which is all to say that Johnson bringing a bible to the dais is questionable, and boeberts assertion that the church should direct the state is flat out wrong.
Government can have faith and religion. It's always had faith and religion. Jefferson didn't advocate that congress be staffed by atheists, he advocated that it be staffed by people of any faith or religion, because the first amendment says exactly that. That was his point...
Let's do separation of Johnson and State instead, please
Mike Johnson is a filthy traitor
Even if you agree with his sentiments, calling it a misnomer is itself a misnomer.
The expression "separation of church and state" in American politics is from Jefferson's response to the Danbury Baptist Association (of Connecticut), in which he reassured them that the First Amendment meant that other larger religious groups would not be permitted to use the power of the federal government to oppress Baptists.
Religious persecution had been a live issue in New England, where the Congregationalist Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had earlier expelled Baptists, Quakers, and other religious nonconformists from the colony.
You can read the full text of the Danbury Baptists' letter to Jefferson, and Jefferson's response, here on Wikipedia.
To summarize greatly, the Baptists say "We believe in religious liberty, but we've seen persecution before; and we worry that the federal government will be used to impose someone else's religious views on us. We want a government that only punishes people for harming others, and can't be pressured into imposing religious laws."
And Jefferson says "Yes, that's why we put this First Amendment thing in; to build a wall of separation between church and state."
This goes along with someone else's question above in response to Boebert - "which church?" It's ironic that the biggest benefactors of separation are religions, and they're the first to try and dismantle it.
The founders of the Constitution and others back then disagreed on a lot of issues and had a few false starts, as well as expected us to continue to modify laws as society changed. But they certainly agreed on no religion within politics, they lived in a world where that had been shown to be problematic over and over. We can see it now as religion creeps back in to our current politics as well as worldwide in other nations.
Fucking jebus moron. Wrong, ignorant, arrogant, idiotic. republiQan.
For all you Republicans in here DON'T WORRY! He'll get back to caring about the Constitution once a bunch of Children get murdered! Just wait a day or two and Republicans will jump back on caring about the Constitution to Protect a Mass Murderer!
Calling modern American Republicans like Mike Johnson a Christian is a misnomer.
Jesus would be whipping this motherfucker for what he thinks of and does to the less fortunate.
Hey some people like being whipped. No kinkshaming please! ;)
Yeah, we should first ask his son about details.
Misnomer? I'm not even sure he's using English properly.
Misnomer - Intentionally misleading name
So I understand what he thinks it means, a catch-all for things like "I know what it sounds like, but it isn't.", like how the Observer in Quantum Phenonemon refers to the tools used, not people actually looking at it... Leading to many misunderstandings on the Dual Slit.
But it's a title for something that's INTENDED to be misleading for one reason or another, like if I named a terrible place to live "Paradise", or a completely harmless and actively friendly snake "The Incredibly Deadly Viper"
Yes, A Series of Unfortunate Events was my English Lesson as a kid
@jeffw Johnson wishes to wipe his unwashed ass with the Constitution and Bill of Rights. These people belong on a secluded island in the middle of the ocean where they can duke it out and leave everyone else out of it. Fuck these people.
marvelous~
another wokening bullshit that he pulled out from his ass.
his awareness, or the lack of, that there's a multitude of faiths where he's serving is very entertaining.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
pushed back Tuesday on the belief that there should be separation between church and state on the U.S., arguing that the founding fathers wanted faith to be a “big part” of government.
People misunderstand it,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked about him praying on the House floor.
In his reply, Jefferson said that the First Amendment, which bars Congress from prohibiting free exercise of a religion, built “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Johnson argued that “faith, our deep religious heritage and tradition is a big part of what it means to be an American” in his comments Tuesday.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) faced backlash last year after she said she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.”
“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution,” Boebert said at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo. “It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.”
The original article contains 466 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Republicans uphold defend and support the Constitution. Also a misnomer
Sure would be nice to have them have that conversation with the actual writers of the constitution.