Interesting, isn't it, that a nation founded under the idea of freedom, especially freedom of religion, seems so little to understand that they are exercising anything but.

The freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment was created because many nations had a national religion. This national religion had the immediate effect of making other religions and their adherents somewhat lesser or even outcast (or in extreme cases, illegal). By founding a nation where there could be no national religion, the idea was that all religions could flourish.

In the United States, there are groups that feel that any public exercise of any religion will automatically disenfranchise those who don't follow that religion. They also have the idea that religion and faith are somehow equivalent, so that a symbol, such as the Ten Commandments, a Menorah, a Nativity Scene or even a Christmas Tree, somehow establishes religion and thus cannot be displayed in a public place. Specifically, they are referring to any governmentally owned area such as a town square, courthouse, etc. The theory goes that doing so means that the government is endorsing some religion (granted that if a government building displayed a symbol of Christianity, it might be seen as an endorsement of Christianity (a faith, not a religion), but if that same building displays symbols of many faiths, where is the endorsement?).

These groups are, in my view, misguided. In their attempt to remove religion from public discourse, they are in effect promoting the "faith" of atheism. I don't suggest for a moment that this is accidental. Rather, I believe that for many of these groups, promoting atheism is the intended goal, and they have used things such as prayer in schools as a foothold. The next foothold will be words such as "under God" in the "Pledge of Allegiance" to the United States Flag, or the words "in God we Trust" on the United States currency. It is interesting to me to learn how people from other nations view this.

The example that you cited, the Ten Commandments, was one where it was decided that the presentation of the Ten Commandments, in a courthouse, somehow suggested that the courthouse would take into account these commandments in cases of law and might make a nonbeliever feel that the courthouse wouldn't treat him fairly. Of course they completely ignored the reality that the Ten Commandments, like so many other historical examples, are a symbol of the earliest recorded laws.

Yes, it is confusing. The United States is often that way.

-- Jeff

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"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan