Separation of Church and State

They didn't see slavery as unconstitutional, either.This message has been edited by nwr, 12-04-2005 01:48 PM

The head of state is a figurehead with no real authority.

Your mistake.There are public schools because an educated society is a far better society. Not at all. Families are free to make private arrangements for educating their children, if they so prefer. Without public schools, you would have far higher crime rates. Have you ever checked the cost of the bureaucracy in the criminal justice system? There shouldn't be any state controlled indoctrination. That's what "separation of church and state" is all about. Terrible, terrible idea.

I think you are seriously mistaken.There is no purging of God. If students want to discuss God between themselves, there is no restriction on that. What is not allowed, is for the teachers to advocate a particular religious view.There is no indoctrination in secularism. Such indoctrination would be advocacy, and is not allowed.There have been a few cases where schools have gone too far, and those are usually corrected.The situation is not at all what you describe.

ROTFLApparently your school did a poor job of teaching the meaning of "indoctrination."If the schools gave religious instruction, you would probably find evangelical children being taught catholic doctrine, and catholic children being taught mormon doctrine. Maybe we should try that for a while, so that people would begin to appreciate why we have that establishment clause in the first amendment.You can have religious instruction at home, in your church, at Sunday school. There is no restriction on that.

Without public schools, our economy would degenerate into that of a third world country. I went through a secular public school (in Australia). It never caused any problems for my evangelical faith. If there was any imbuing of secularism, I surely did not notice it.AbE: When using "public school" above, I was using the American meaning of the term. That is, I was referring to a state school, not a private school. The private boarding schools were (probably still are) called "public schools" in Australia.This message has been edited by nwr, 12-14-2005 07:33 PM

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Abolish public schools? What are you, some sort of communist?

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You're joking right?

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I suspect that WoundedKing was having a little fun. In Britain, the term "public school" means about the same as our "private school". I think they use "state school" to refer to an institution that we would call a public school.

How do you know that your teachers were afraid? Maybe they were just using good judgement. Then I would say that most of the class were exercising good judgement. I'm a little surprised at that.At my high school, there was a small group of us (as evangelicals) that held lunchtime and after school meetings. We would invite occasional speakers. Sometimes we showed Moody Bible institute films. Okay, this was in Australia. But I'm sure that this is possible in the U.S. There have been supreme court decisions that say that if a school recognizes a chess club, it must give equal treatment to an evangelical club (or any other student religious group). Cringing was the right reaction. I'm sorry to hear that you have been deprived of a decent university education (and I am saying that with sincerity, not as a cheap shot). You are probably making a statement that you like the blue ones best, so you are keeping those for yourself.

Why should that be necessary. Was anything preventing you from saying a silent prayer at the start of each class? Was there any reason you could not do some Bible reading during your lunch hour? If you are correct in that, then America is an atheist nation, wearing a make-believe Christian suit. What is limiting the church to one hour per week? It seems to me that you should try a different church.

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Cringing was the right reaction.

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How can cringing when a body of Christians pray together be the right reaction?

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You should be cringing because the teacher is acting unprofessionally. To bring in something that is not part of the subject matter for the class, whether a political position or a religious statement, is unprofessional.By having a faculty restricted to people who are willing to act unprofessionally, your university has deprived you of exposure to the quality and diversity of scholars that should be part of a university education.

You have just changed from "I'm against the public schools" in Message 76 to "Christians left the public schools." My comment on the economy had to do with not having public schools, resulting in a high illiteracy rate.

That's plain silly. I did not call the practice of your faith unprofessional. But there is a proper time and place for prayers and preaching, and mathematics class (for example) is not that time and place.

The professors of mathematics decide what is professional for them acting within their profession. University professors decide what is professional for them. There is probably a code of ethics supported by the AAUP (American Assoc. of University Professors).I'm not denying that there may be something subjective about such codes. My point is that your university is, in effect, shutting out the majority of the profession from being on their faculty.

I have been on a jury, and it isn't as you described it. The judge was well aware the jury could not be expected to be knowledgable in the fine points of the law. As a consequence, the judge was explicit about how to interpret the particular laws on which the case was based.The judge was also clear that the jury members may appeal to their experience in life, as attempt to reach a verdict. Presumably some of the jury members could be quite religious, and the experience in life of those members could have a religious component.Presumably the safeguard is that the jury should represent a cross section of the community. If a jury member brings up God's law, another jury member could challenge the relevance of that.

You have that wrong. Prayer was not taken out of the schools.You can still pray privately in schools. And, according to Matt 6:6, private prayer is what you should be using anyway.