Is it a violation of the seperation of church and state when preachers tell their congregation who to vote for
610390
Nah not really. Preachers you have to remember are not held to any particular standard. What I mean to say is when they preach it is there perception and interpretation and does not make it so. Form your own opinion and they can keep theirs to themselves. When you go into the voting booth they will not know who you voted for anyway unless you tell them and quite frankly that is none of there damn business. As far as a separation of church and state, well that may be one preacher you want to separate from if he/she is attempting to influence your voting decision. Keep in mind one thing though. If you go to church regularly and heed and believe and listen to and follow your preachers teachings then you will most likely vote as they would have anyway. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Remember that!!
1186108
My church is kind of like that. We are a methodist church but with an open policy. Anyone is welcome with no judgement from the church. After all, Christ did say all should come to the temple and worship him. He didn't truly specify.\n\nAnd to whoever says we should make our own decisions, we have. We CHOSE to believe in God. Just because YOU have problems with who you are and where you belong, don't take it out on those who have figured it out.
930516
Absolutely. Being forced to swear on a Bible would violate the Constitution, which forbids religious tests as qualifications for public office.\n\nArticle VI of the Constitution of the United States of America reads, in part:\n\nThe Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
1150474
^&^&^&\n\nIt is not specifically written, but it is guaranteed within the 1st amendment.\n\nIn the United States, separation of church and state is sometimes believed to be in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by legal precedents interpreting that clause, some extremely controversial. The Establishment Clause states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" However, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment (one of the Reconstruction Amendments) makes the Establishment Clause and other portions of the Bill of Rights binding on state and local governments as well, although it is arguable that this restriction on state and local government existed in Article VI of the unamended Constitution and that the Fourteenth Amendment was a clarification on the limitation of government power. Many other democratic governments around the world have similar clauses in their respective constitutions.\n\nThe phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, but rather is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, Jefferson referred to a "wall of separation between church and state."\n\nJames Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote in the early 1800s, "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate."\n\nThe belief that religious and state institutions should be separate covers a wide spectrum, ranging between one extreme which would secularize or eliminate the church, and theocracy, in which the government is an affiliate of the church. Some secularists believe that the state should be kept entirely separate from religion, and that the institutions of religion should be entirely free from governmental interference. Churches that exercise their authority completely apart from government endorsement, whose foundations are not in the state, are conventionally called "Free" churches.
503202
General citizen is having a very specific right in this regard. What they have to do is stand up, elect good leaders who take decision as per public intentions and wish. If you sit in your house on election day and think that others wil vote for he person of your liking then you can just remain mute spectator of all this.
720222
Amendment I\nCongress 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. \n\nwhere does this say separation.\nWe are free to worship the god we want or no god at all.\nThe government can not state that my God is better than your god or no god is the right path. We must live with each other and let each other worship in there own way even if I want to pray to my big toe or no god at all.\n\n We do not have a secular government that would be given in to one side. What we have is a free government. In other words I do not care what you believe I may think your a fool for thinking that way. But I will fight for your right to be live it and stand by your side if any one wants to make you stop or force your views down.
1110304
First of all the term "separation of church and state" is not found in the Constitution. It is implied due to the fact that the original settlers here were fleeing religious persecution in their home countries. That "separation" was to protect the rights of ALL people regardless of their religious background. There is no mention that the church cannot enter the government, the protection was to keep the government out of the church. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the writers of the Constitution were all religious (Christian) men. Charles Carrol of Carrolington was the only Catholic, the rest were of other denominations, Anglicans, Calvinists, Quakers ect. It is in this century after World War II, that the move to remove any mention of God from public buildings, currency, schools has had full sway. As a result there are no longer any absolutes. You swear on no Bible in court, Schools have become battlegrounds and there is no respect or reverence of God to be found outside the private home or church. If you read thye writings of these men you will realize the changes that have been made to their original work have strayed drasticly from the original intent. They would be ashamed.
496806
Jesus rebuked this sort of behavior in Revelation 2:1-7, Matthew 20:25-28, and John 18:36. I agree with you. \n\nIf we really want people to act like Christians, then we should preach the Gospel to them. Protests and votes are not going to change people's hearts, which Jesus said is the reason that we all sin, not the laws around us (Matthew 15:11,15-20). But the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). \n\nFor example, if all Americans were Christians, then it would not matter that abortion is legal, the abortion clinics would go out of business for lack of business. They only have a market because we are focusing on the wrong battle (Ephesians 6:12-17).
648570
No.Preachers should preach only,not take \nmoney for it.
1141361
The authority is given through the calling of God; if your postulation were to be true, there would be no pastors as the Bible was written in the first century.\n\nYou are mistaken because God still reveals things to us today, but the things he reveals today do not contradict what he revealed in the past.  If they did contradict, the kingdom of heaven would fall.\n\n"Jesus knew what the Pharisees were thinking, so he said to them, 'Every kingdom that is divided against itself will be destroyed. And any city or family that is divided against itself will not continue.'"
116490
You have a twisted view of the First Amendment - as do most Americans today. Until the mid-1900s, this amendment was understood to be exactly what it said:\n\n"Congress shall make no law respecting an ESTABLISHMENT of religion, or PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF ..." (caps added)\n\nThe statement about a wall of separation between church and state was made in a letter on January 1, 1802, by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The congregation heard a widespread rumor that the Congregationalists, another denomination, were to become the national religion. This was very alarming to people who knew about religious persecution in England by the state established church. Jefferson made it clear in his letter to the Danbury Congregation that the separation was to be that government would not establish a national religion or dictate to men how to worship God. Jefferson's letter from which the phrase "separation of church and state" was taken affirmed first amendment rights. Jefferson wrote:\n\n"I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.\n\nThe reason Jefferson choose the expression "separation of church and state" was because he was addressing a Baptist congregation; a denomination of which he was not a member. Jefferson wanted to remove all fears that the state would make dictates to the church. He was establishing common ground with the Baptists by borrowing the words of Roger Williams, one of the Baptist's own prominent preachers. Williams had said:\n\n"When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that there fore if He will eer please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world..." \n\nThe "wall" was understood as one-directional; its purpose was to protect the church from the state. The world was not to corrupt the church, yet the church was free to teach the people Biblical values.\n\nOur Constitution was founded on Biblical principles and it was the intention of the authors for this to be a Christian nation. The Constitution had 55 people work upon it, of which 52 were evangelical Christians. We can go back in history and look at what the founding fathers wrote to know where they were getting their ideas.\n\nThis is exactly what two professors did. Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman reviewed an estimated 15,000 items with explicit political content printed between 1760 and 1805 and from these items they identified 3,154 references to other sources. The source they most often quoted was the Bible.\n\nThe founding fathers took ideas from the Bible and incorporated them into our government. If it was their intention to separate the state and church they would never have taken principles from the Bible and put them into our government.\n\nAn example of an idea taken from the Bible and then incorporated into our government is found in Isaiah 33:22 which says, "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king..."  The founding fathers took this scripture and made three major branches in our government: judicial, legislative, and executive. As mentioned earlier, the founding fathers strongly believed that Man was by nature corrupt and therefore it was necessary to separate the powers of the government.\n\nFor instance, the President has the power to execute laws but not make them, and Congress has the power to make laws but not to judge the people. The simple principle of checks and balances came
511654
No, but the Republican party is sure touting that there is a war on Christianity to polarize certain groups because that will get them put into office.  There are also groups that think the US should be a theocracy but that is blatantly unconstitutional.  Sorry, it's a democracy where all of us have the same rights.
787373
I dont care if they do. As a matter of fact, I think they should. Seperation of church and state, marriage, legally, is a state issue.\n\nHowever, a friend of mine, a Christian, does not support it, because it contributes to the moral decline of marriage. My point to her was "Doesnt the 50% HETEROSEXUAL divorce rate do that too?" She had no answer.
748067
Church State seperation my friend, remember that politics and religion don't mix
806676
I think it depends on the pastor marrying them, the church, and the denomination sometimes. There isn't a set of rules like that that goes for every church. They should maybe look at some other ones?
1179898
The phrase itself appears in a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, on Jan 1, 1802. \n\n        The Baptist Association had written to President Jefferson regarding a "rumor that a particular denomination was soon to be recognized as the national denomination." Jefferson responded to calm their fears by assuring them that the federal government would not establish any single denomination of Christianity as the National denomination. He wrote: "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State." \n\n        Notice the phrasing in the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3:\n\n\n        The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
241532
Absolutely not.  When we introduce religion into politics, we end up hurting one group of people to make another group happy.  Which religion would be allow a role in politics and which should be not?  Everyone wants it their way, everyone wants their religion to be the one in charge.