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SarahD

(1,732 posts)
Sat Jan 20, 2024, 11:20 PM Jan 2024

Be glad we don't have this. Yet.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/19/india/india-modi-ayodhya-ram-mandir-explainer-hnk-intl/index.html
This is what happens when religion, politics and government get blended together. Many people think it's OK for the government to endorse "my" religion, but they don't realize it's a zero-sum game. One religion gains at the expense of the others, and the winds can shift on a whim. Even the most faithful can find themselves on the wrong end of a purge, sometimes with fatal consequences. Our government stands between us and religious persecution of all sorts. If we let that slip away, we are all at risk, even the most zealous, perhaps particularly the most zealous.
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keithbvadu2

(40,500 posts)
1. "that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. "
Sun Jan 21, 2024, 12:02 AM
Jan 2024
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/?no-ist= ;

Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. "Who does not see," he wrote, "that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?" Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia.

keithbvadu2

(40,500 posts)
2. Michael Flynn::: "... One nation under God, and one religion under God."
Sun Jan 21, 2024, 12:06 AM
Jan 2024
https://democraticunderground.com/100216049081

Michael Flynn tonight: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.”

no_hypocrisy

(49,194 posts)
3. In law school, I researched The Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.
Sun Jan 21, 2024, 04:59 AM
Jan 2024

Ironically, Baptists were thrown in jail during the Colonial Period of America -- for being Baptists.

Before the Constitution, you could be prosecuted and persecuted for not being part of the majority religion, usually some sort of Protestantism. Catholics. Jews. "Mohammedanists". For stuff like blasphemy.

Imagine your child being indoctrinated in a public school where he/she is legally mandated to attend. If they resist or protest, they are segregated by their peers on the playground, in the classroom, forget sports.

Suppose you wish to subdivide your property but you are a "Deist" or an atheist but the Zoning Board is comprised of fundamentalists. You could be legally denied your property rights.

That's how one religion could affect everyday life if allowed.

Major Nikon

(36,911 posts)
5. This adequately describes rural education in the South when I was a kid
Sun Jan 21, 2024, 09:43 AM
Jan 2024
Imagine your child being indoctrinated in a public school where he/she is legally mandated to attend. If they resist or protest, they are segregated by their peers on the playground, in the classroom, forget sports.


The zealots would indoctrinate their kids to harass anyone who did not believe as they believed. If you were ever identified as any religion other than their particular denomination(Southern Baptist), you were hounded relentlessly. Coming out as atheist was unthinkable. Meanwhile teachers and anyone else in authority either were part of it, or turned a blind eye to it.

One of the biggest problems with religion is the crank magnetism. And while certainly the majority of believers aren't cranks, they never seem to have much problem with the cranks. If anything their silence provides cover for them.
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