Seperation of Church and State: The Concept

During our past two shows the issue of the separation of church and state provoked mild debate between Chris and myself; therefore, I thought I would take this opportunity to explain my point of view. The principal of the separation of church and state may not have been directly mentioned in the U.S. constitution; however, it is a principle that people like Thomas Jefferson believed in and used in a constitutional context. As Chris said on the show today, many often mistakenly believe that the separation of church and state is guaranteed in the constitution; however, what they are truly referencing is our constitutional guarantee to the right of freedom of religion. These two things are fundamentally different, freedom of religion is the right to practice whichever religion that one wishes without the fear of persecution,while on the other hand, the separation of church and state is a concept which protects against the possibility that the head of the church could also be the head of the state. The protection offered by separating the church and state is what guarantees the right to freedom of religion because if the head of the church is also the head of the state then there is bound to be persecution, as was the case in the Roman Empire. The problem is that some members of the far left often abuse the concept of separation of church and state stretching its meaning in order to help support theories that it was never intended to apply to. One recent example occurred in Boulder, Colorado on September 26, 2007 when several students staged a "pledge of Allegiance" protest against the phrase "under God" mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance. This example highlights my point that the concept of the separation of church and state is being tarnished and degraded by atheists and members of the far left, so much so that many conservatives regard the phrase as a "dirty" and irrelevant concept. Saying the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is not combining church and state for the simple reason that it doesn't mention a single religion or a specific God; furthermore, schools often do not require students to say the pledge of allegiance thus the phrase "under God" is not forced upon anyone. I also want to mention an idea that Chris mentioned on Friday's show which is the fact that if you take all religious elements out of our society than what you are in fact doing is making the United States an atheist state, going against our philosophy of not having a national religion. My suggestion to those abusing the concept of the separation of church and state would be to read the U.S. Constitution and stop waisting time that could be better spent strengthening our schools, or for that matter our national security.