On Jan 23, 5:40 pm, gruff <[email protected]> wrote:
> "... On Jan 22, 1:46 pm, chazwin <[email protected]> wrote: ..."
>
> > > Even Obama included 'non-believers' in his speech the other day ...
>
> > To have a religious "invocation" at the start flies
> > against the founding principles of the constitution which guarantees a
> > disestablishment of church and state. This guarantee was well provided
> > to prevent religious conflict between different sects and groups
> > within Christianity and to be inclusive of all religions. The sermons
> > at the start and end of the ceremony destroyed this founding
> > principle. It is not enough to include Jews, Muslims and Hindus in his
> > speech when they have already been excluded by the religious sandwich
> > which was the ceremony.
>
> You make a good point Chaz. I was not happy about the religious
> invocation either, but when we live in a nation that is so religious
> -- the most religious of all developed nations by far -- there is a
> huge number of citizens that need to be appeased. I don't care for
> the appeasement approach either but it does seem necessary if the
> President is to gather sufficient support behind his plans and
> actions.
Apparently the particular choice of the "invocator" was controversial,
him being some kind of born-again type. With 20,000 Christian sects
across the world, as well as other religions, any choice must alienate
the majority in some way.This make my point well that to have had a
non religious ceremony would have been preferable.
But here in the k we have weird stuff too. With each opening of
Parliament the Queen is compelled to read out the prospectus of
legislation written by the leading party in the Commons. We all know
that these are not her own words. Strangely though, in a state in
which the church is the organ of the state, there is no involvement
with religion in the opening of Parliament. I have always found it
paradoxical that in the US where the church and state are supposedly
separate there is massive involvement of religion in politics, but in
the UK where the state and church are established religious ideas have
played almost no role since the time of Darwin.
I prefer things here, though have always resented that the church and
state are not separated.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
""Minds Eye"" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
