For those against the Death Penalty

[Benton]

(07-03-2018, 12:48 PM)bfine32 Wrote: You don't believe in separation of church and state?

You do?

For the record, I do.

EDIT: I figured it would be easier to go ahead and clarify while I've got a couple minutes.

There's no issue with spiritual beliefs shaping our government. Spiritual is a pretty broad term there.

I have a religion. The core of it is basically "love each other, help each other, don't hurt each other." So I don't have any issue with lawmaking that reflects that. Most of my friends who have some sort of religion pretty well fall in line with that. So while we may not worship the same, or even believe in the same things, we can (probably) both agree you shouldn't kill someone, steal their stuff, **** in their mailbox, etc.

That's not the same as church and state where we allow a religion — any religion — to shape policy. Because of my religious beliefs, I think separation of church and state is one of the most important rights we have. I've mentioned before I grew up in a pretty strict Church of Christ. There were two branches in my hometown, with about 75% of the educators belonging to one church or the other. So even though there was a lot of community outcry, there was a lot of administrative support when the district glued together pages in science books that mentioned evolution. Same when they briefly banned the prom (the CoC forbade dancing), but they gave up on that one.