Freedom to Express Religion

I thought its because the percentage of Muslims in the USA is in single digits and they have no political power to speak of

 

This. Right now, the Muslim population is 1.1%. If that were to grow to a much higher percentage, and Muslims started to gather significant power, then the worry would grow. But I don't see this happening in my lifetime.

 

There are 4 Muslims in Congress, and they are a big enough voting block in Michigan that Biden is kowtowing to their wishes ahead of the 2024 elections.

There is also history to consider. History tells us we should be much more concerned about Islam than we should be about Christianity.

 

That's less than 1% of congress, so they are even less represented in government than their number in the population.

 

It is about the same scale we are talking about with Christian Nationalism in the federal government.

There is Boebert and MTG. So we have two people who openly advocate Christian Nationalism.

The number of people who openly identify as Islamic in Congress is double that.

 

None of the Muslims in congress want a theocracy or even advocate policies that could be called close to leading that, so false. Omar and Co are secular leftist internationalists, kinda the opposite of religious nationalists lol.

 

@Contra responded to Phil's post where Phil mentioned Boebert saying the 'church is supposed to direct the government' when she spoke to the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colorado

The first video is a short isolated clip of the 'church is to direct the government' and the 2nd is a video of the entire service. So you don't waste time trying to find it, the pertinent part of her address is between the 35 second to 50 second marks of the first shortened clip.



Jayson look uncomfortable when called up for the couple to be prayed over. Ms Boebert filed for divorce soon after she spoke to this small congregation at their Sunday service.

 

Personally, I've heard enough about Boebert to form an opinion. I'm not a fan. I don't have problems with her sharing her opinions on politics, but I do have problems with her doing it in that context on what appears to be a Sunday morning. There is definitely something off with her.

Nonetheless, she is correct on one point, which is the government has no business sticking its nose in the church's domain and attempting to regulate it. That is part of separation of church and state. Neither the state nor the church wields authority over the other. That is what separation of church and state is in its essence, and this is often misconstrued as the state is free from the shackles of morality and has free license to indulge any evil democracy lusts after. That is not separation of church and state. That is union of an evil culture and the state, which is evil and should be condemned by everyone.

I think an insightful historical comparison involves the Scottish Presbyterians. They rebuked the government of Scotland and said Christ is the head of the church not the government. So, they rejected the government's interference in regulating Christ's church, and they considered this to be a major overreach by government into the affairs of the church.

That was the exact nature of the conflict that occurred in 2020 with the government telling churches they were not allowed to meet. And that is precisely what Lauren Boebert was commenting on in that video. I think she went overboard with her comments about defying the schools, but her comments about the church meeting and defying the government is exactly what the Scottish Presbyterians advocated for when the government encroached upon their religious freedom.

 

Oh come on, there’s alot more than just those two, they are just two dumb enough to openly embrace it (probably without having any real historical perpective about the pitfalls of nationalism in general, let alone “Christian” or fundamentalist nationalism).

I don’t even see those two particular clowns as legitimately religious, not in any credible way. Certainly enough is known about them to see they both represent the exact opposite of a model Christian. Bottom of the barrel scum. So for them to proclaim themselves “Christian nationalists” comes off as joke’ish. I wouid even say meaningless, but for the fact they do actually represent actual congressional districts, which means decent numbers of people somehow vote for them, and the reality is there are dozens in congress that share their views in perhaps slightly less moronic ways. I wouldn’t even suggest there is a correlation between the faith of a person and “Christian nationalism”, if anything I’d suspect the loudmouth Christian nationalists are probably more inclined to be fake Christian’s. Grifters. But again, somebody votes for them so either they can’t see through them or they like the message.

 

Churches were not exactly targeted per se. Singling out churches wouid be plainly unconstitutional. Some states had stricter stay at home measures in general. Applicable to all citizens. It is obviously a difficult issue during a pandemic, but some churches straight up flaunted public safety that was literally applied everywhere else (and some, sadly, were doing this 100% for attention or political reasons, risking the lives of their older congregants in particular).

Would it be reasonable for a church to flaunt other public safety measures, like building codes, fire codes, etc? Religious institutions get lots of leeway with how they carry out their business, this is what the constitution guarantees. But they also aren’t totally insular, at some point they are subject to the laws of the land.

 

But BLM mass protests were allowed to meet without social distancing or masking. It was targeting churches because those with the DNC VIP pass did not have to abide by the rules. Activities that helped the DNC win elections were considered so important that the rules did not have to be enforced on those activities. But church was not deemed to be that important to receive the same privileges.

 

Yes, I remember all the outdoor churches that were unfairly targeted.

 

A govt is going to have a helluva time stopping a nationwide angry protest. Not sure of this comparison to… church services.

I think the various states issued the rules applicable to all without discrimination, and the vast majority of religious institutions obliged or took reasonable measures to protect their communities (online services, 50% capacity for social distancing etc). A few may have complained or pushed to open sooner than others just as different states figured things out differently after that initial 2-3 months. How many loudmouths went all-in on defying public health during the initial stages of the pandemic when much of the world was shut-in? My impression was it actually wasn’t many, and I don’t recall any actually coming to a stand-off type situation with the govt. If there were millions of Christians demanding this of their government ala BLM, maybe they could have also foolishly taken to the streets, but I think the reality is most Christians probably were on board with temporary public health measures and thus largely not interested in fighting. Those that decided to “fight” didn’t really have to march anywhere to make a point (ala BLM) they could just go ahead and have church services and in most cases the govt would do nothing. I suspect the rare cases where a govt did anything punitive was where the religious leader made a show of it, effectively forcing the local/state govts hand.

 

Look at the latest polling numbers, not that I totally believe they are accurate, but it's fun to see Biden getting stomped by President Trump in every swing-state, and in other states that he should win.

The Dems are trying to work out how to "champion" another candidate to run against President Trump.

Biden is in deep doo-doo... literally (gross) and figuratively speaking.

 

If they platform another candidate you are probably looking at Gavin Newsome, who was campaigning outside of his own state earlier this election cycle.

 

The SCOTUS struck down the enforcement of the rules on churches as arbitrary and selective. This was Neil Gorsuch's comments on California laws forcing churches to close:

"California no longer asks its movie studios, malls, and manicurists to wait," Gorsuch said. "As this crisis enters its second year-and hovers over a second Lent, a second Passover, and a second Ramadan-it is too late for the state to defend extreme measures with claims of temporary exigency, if it ever could. Drafting narrowly tailored regulations can be difficult. But if Hollywood may host a studio audience or film a singing competition while not a single soul may enter California's churches, synagogues, and mosques, something has gone seriously awry."
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Supreme Court rebukes California's strict coronavirus rules for churches | Catholic News Agency

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The SCOTUS ruled California's shut down of churches was unconstitutional. Hollywood getting a DNC VIP Pass to exempt them from following COVID restrictions while churches did not get one was unconstitutional.

 

Yes, there were several cases that reached the Supreme Court and that the court ruled on one way or the other.

I recall NY had a dumb law that stated churches could only have 25 at a time. I had no problem with that one being struck because “25” was just an arbitrary number pulled out of the air.

My take at the time was capacity limits in a building should be enforced more like the fire codes. In theory if the concern was air quality or trying to lessen disease spread, it should be a function of the cubic space inside a building. That number would be based on math, whether a movie theater, grocery, or place of worship.

The amusing thing about this case example you pulled up is this highly conservative court UPHELD the ban on singing. Which to me is actually the craziest aspect. Maybe the state of CA had some issues w/ how they regulated capacity inconsistently, which opened the window to overrule that (although I don’t believe the characterization of discrimination is accurate). But to me, to say a church cannot do its traditional hymns and singing is a more direct affront to the practice of religion, and yet the court allowed that to stand. Weird.

 

I think we all know that communist is as bad or worse than Biden. At least we know he's not suffering from dementia when he espouses his communist dictates that all Californian's have to live with. I'll bet the independent voters know this too.

At least the voters out west know Gavin Newsome's commie ways. He doesn't scare me one bit. They have been rumored to install Gavin Newsome late in this election cycle. It won't matter...

 

The SCOTUS did not go as far in their ruling as I would have liked. As I described separation of church of state in a previous post, the original idea was the state wields no authority over the church, and the church wields no authority over the state. The idea is the two are parallel coexisting entities that are not to interfere with one another. This is why churches are tax exempt entities because the power to tax is a hop and a skip away from having the power of state coercion on the neck of the church.

There are some areas where the lines blur a little bit, building codes are one example. In general, the principle is so important and so consistently trampled over by governments abroad that it is probably best to veer to the side of less exceptions rather than more.

What happened in 2020, is what happened in Act 5:29. The government said to the church, "No, you can't do that." And the church said, "We obey God rather than man."

I think the banning of singing enters into that category. Worship is not optional. It is something that is prescribed. Unfortunately, the SCOTUS missed that one, and future generations might have to deal with that when the issue comes up again.