Air Force Academy creates worship area for Pagans, Druids, and Wiccans

I didn't say ALL schools across the board. Are you denying these things have EVER happened ANYWHERE in American schools?

I guess you all haven't kept up with some of the zealous attempts by school officials over the last few decades to obey the first amendment by prohibiting Christian clubs, even prayer groups, on school grounds and prohibiting the Bible too, as if, weirdly enough, a private citizen could violate what was written only for the purpose of restricting Congress. Of course they think the school administration itself represents Congress or the U.S. since they are a public institution so they feel it's their duty to make sure they don't "establish" Christianity by allowing such Christian practices on their premises. Of course in this misguided zeal what they are really doing is violating the second clause of the amendment against prohibiting "the free exercise thereof." I'm amazed you all deny this. This sort of thing has been going on for years. I even saw something in the news this morning I think about such a case. Sorry, it's SO common, the idea that I have to track down evidence makes me very tired. But who knows, if I have to I'll try to get to it later.

Buz's point was that the Supreme Court is to serve the law, justice and truth, not people, and anyone who reduces their obligation to being sensitive to people has already trashed justice.And he's right, if you make sensitivity to people the job of the courts you are of course choosing some people over others because all court issues have at least two sides.No, judges are to be about justice, not people. You know, that lady with the blindfold on holding the scales? That's to symbolize the impartiality of justice, that it's not to be a respecter of persons. The exact opposite of what Obama wants.

No, it's to serve justice.

Right, thank you Rahvin, I knew these things were going on so there you have it, and you are giving the standard rationalization, claiming the law requires it rather than that it's a violation of the prohibition clause.Yes, it's a complicated situation I grant but the schools are not Congress and not the US government so the idea that they are violating the 1st amendment in allowing religious practices is ridiculous.Teachers shouldn't pressure children about anything and it's just plain courtesy and good classroom demeanor to maintain a neutral attitude about personal beliefs (although I had one high school teacher myself who preached against religion and others who preached politics and I know it goes on anyway). Nothing to do with the first amendment, just simple common sense, an administrative matter, not a matter for the first amendment.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then YOU please explain the symbolism of Lady Justice with the blindfold and the scales or do you just want to throw her into the trash?

Because the human tendency is to decide not on the grounds of fairness and impartiality but according to who the people are that are being brought before the court. So to explicitly require a judge to judge cases on the grounds of sensitivity to people is to explicitly deny the impartiality and fairness of true justice. Justice requires a complete lack of concern about WHO is being judged.

Sorry, nwr, it is not about ALL people, it is about specific people. Obama doesn't want justice he want empathy to specific groups of people:Obama said: The Volokh Conspiracy - Who Would Barack Obama Nominate to the Supreme Court?:That is NOT the business of a judge. Absolute total blindness to persons is the business of a judge. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Why on earth would you ask such a question? If we don't run government by higher standards than our own human prejudices we might as well go back to living in caves.

OK you want to insist on using the term in a different sense than I'm using it so you can make it say what you want it to say. The quote from Obama is very clear that your meaning is not his meaning, but hey, we don't HAVE to communicate if you like talking at cross purposes all the time.

Christopher Columbus came to America with the strong conviction that God was sending him to bring Christ to the new world. The first pilgrims came with the strong conviction that it was their mission to establish a new order under Christ's rule.The fiirst schools in America taught first graders from a book that rehearsed the teachings of the Bible on morality and the nature of God through the Westminster Catechism.Most of the founding fathers are on record saying that the kind of government they gave us depends for its functioning on a religious and moral people and their context was clearly Christianity. Over and over you can find quotes from such as Washington, Adams, Noah Webster all I can remember but the list is much longer -- on how FREEDOM for a people can ONLY work based on the principles of the CHRISTIAN religion.ALL our universities, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, a dozen or more others, were originally founded in the name of Christ and for the propagation of His truths. Harvard's motto has been truncated to Veritas but it originaly referred to the Truth of Christ.Alexis de Toqueville wrote that the most salient thing he observed about America was its religious nature, that it was religious through and through, and that Americans always based their claim to freedom on their allegiance to Christ. He pointed out the contrast between that belief and the view in France that freedom and Christianity were separate and even mutually exclusive ideas. Funny how so many now have the French view and we've lost the original American understanding.Law in America was originally based on Christian principles. The reason the colonies had a religious oath test was that they wanted to insure that public servants would be true to the sort of principles that would at least work on their consciences to keep them from misusing their power.It was Benjamin Franklin, who was not himself really a Christian but clearly believed in God, who admonished the first Congress that they should open in prayer, as it is God who would either make or break the new nation.Examples like this can be multiplied many times over. Now THAT is the sense in which America was originally a Christian nation, that it was intended to be Christian principles that guided its formation and institutions.It was NOT to be a Christian nation in the sense that everyone had to belong to a particular denomination or even to a Christian church. The very concept of FREEDOM OF RELIGION derives from Christian principles. It was the Puritan John Owen, at Oxford or Cambridge, I forget, who first taught on freedom of conscience, that nobody should ever be compelled to accept a belief his own conscience doesn't accept -- a strongly Christian view that he gave in answer to the many religious wars that had been trying to compel such allegiances. This view reached the American founders through John Locke, who had sat under Owens' teaching.When Washington wrote to the pirates of Tripoli that America was not a Christian nation he could only have meant that Christian beliefs are not forced on the citizens and there is no officially established religion, he could not have meant that the nation itself did not have Christian foundations because he'd have then been contradicting himself as he'd clearly written on the necessity for a Christian mindset to govern this nation if it was to succeed.The odd fact is that people of other beliefs can be free to practice them only under a Christian government.Now we are way past that era and hardly anyone even remembers it any more.All we ever hear are about the failures of people to live up to it, people being fallible, including the founders, about the Deism of the founders (many were but that Deism was based on a Biblical view and the law they practiced was based on a Biblical view and they were all steeped in Christian principles in general and when they wrote of the importance of "religion" in the life of the nation they always used the term to refer to Christianity), about the terrible mistake of slavery (no, that was NOT written in the Consitution, the practice of slavery violated the true meaning of the Constitution and that eventually came out). It was Wilberforce in England who was the very first to stand against the slave trade and then slavery itself, year after year preaching against it to Parliament to hoots and jeers until after 46 years of this just before his death they passed a law outlawing it. The English were the first. America lagged but there were always voices against it. And not all Christians are really Christians. You focus on the practices of fallible men and forget that the whole work to free the slaves was a Christian work and it had never happened in any other context on earth where slavery has always been common everywhere.Freedom to practice any religion is only guaranteed BECAUSE this nation was originally Christian in principle and law and government.This isn't really about individual beliefs, it's about PRINCIPLES that run a government. But those principles are meant to protect individual beliefs in all contexts.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is definitely a confusion about the meaning of the term "religion" among Christians. The term is rejected these days because it is understood to refer to a ritualistic set of practices or a list of do's and don't's, which is the case in most of the world's religions and much of Christianity as well, in contrast to a living relationship with the living God which is the true form of Christianity.However, this can be confusing when you see how the term is used in general, and particularly how it was used just a couple of centuries ago among Christians to refer specifically to Christianity itself, as among the American founders for instance. Christians who have no sense of history simply use the term in its most recent evangelical sense and this confuses people who know it in more than one sense. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Catholicism had long since stopped being a Christian institution and the people the Inquisition most severely persecuted were the true Christians. If you read the writings of the first pilgrims you will see that it wasn't just to escape persecution but to actively obey Christ in establishing a new world based on His teachings that they came to America.No, if you read any of writings of leaders of the founding generation of America -- read them, letters, documents, etc., or if you're going to read only cherry-picked quotes which is the situation most of us are in by necessity, then read those that show their Christian mindset, rather than the few that seem to support this false idea of secularism, you will see how wrong you are about this ever having been a "secular" nation in the sense you all mean it today.I can assure you that Voltaire had nothing to do with the American founding, and Locke, although he was not a Christian, was steeped in Christian teaching through the Christianity-saturated universities in England and specifically the Puritan John Owen.

Sorry, yes it wasn't Washington.But what that quote means has to be understood in the context of the other actions and writings of all the founders and Adams himself which are full of admonitions about the necessity of Christian morality and principles for the success of the nation. Either he was contradicting himself or he didn't mean what you think he meant by the way America was not a Christian nation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Catholic Church had been killing and persecuting Christians such as the Waldensians and Albigensians for centuries. If it wasn't officially under the title of the office of the Inquisition it was the same in spirit.