Separation of Morals and State

I suppose that since the name of this blog is “A Spiritual Man’s Eyes” I should write about an overtly spiritual subject or two. There are so many to choose from. Here are some topics I will be addressing:

• Separation of church and state
• Why people like to say "I'm spiritual, but not religious."
• How so many religions can be fighting about who is right
• Is religion to blame for the world's woes?
• Evolution or Creation?

Let’s start with some separation of steak and eggs for breakfast. Oops, I mean Church and State. The first amendment to the Constitution, in its entirety, states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That is all the Constitution says about religion. I totally agree that Congress should not tell us what religion we should choose. I believe in freedom of religion. The Baha’i Faith espouses the idea of “independent investigation of truth” and I understand that to mean that we are all responsible to choose our relationship, or lack thereof, with whatever vision of a Greater Power we have. Not having the government choose it for us is a good thing.

Congress shouldn’t prohibit the free exercise of religion. I totally agree with that; I just don’t agree with the way it is commonly interpreted. Isn’t my ability to exercise my chosen religion inhibited when I can’t pray in school? Taking the first amendment to its extreme like we have, where we prohibit any mention or worship of God, or anything that smacks of spirituality, has the unfortunate side effect of eliminating such essential or beneficial elements of education as morals, virtues, contemplation and meditation.

Why can’t we teach morals in school? I had a conversation about this with a criminology professor. I was saying that the writer we were discussing was basically saying that moral education would help to prevent crime and I thought schools should focus on moral education more than they do. She said she didn’t want anyone imposing their morals on her children. I asked if she thought we could all come up with a common set of morals we could agree on. After all, doesn’t everyone want their child to learn honesty, for example? She said no. There are some times you have to lie. Sigh. People are so afraid that teaching morals is teaching religion. (Why are we so afraid of religion? Tune in next week.) It is the same with meditation. I guess we associate meditation with cults and drugs and hippies or something, but even the Bible uses the word “meditate” fourteen times. And it doesn’t say “Thou shalt not meditate.”

So rather than having everyone running around terrified that they are going to be unknowingly converted to some strange cult, let’s encourage dialog about religion and respect others who believe differently. We can stop fearing that our children are going to hell because someone will convince them to meditate. They are going to hell for entirely different reasons, like sex and drugs and rock and roll.

When separation of church and state turns into separation of morals from government, we end up with corruption, greed, school shootings, rampant crime, and Enron.

Can we all at least agree on respect?