The Necessity of the Separation of Church and State
Granted, it is almost impossible to completely separate the two. Most of the law in this country and most of the countries in the world is based off of some kind of a moral “natural” or “religious” law. Take the ten commandments for example. If they are not laws themselves, most of them are things that we take to be unspoken rules. Disrespecting your mother or your father may not be a crime, but it is not highly looked upon as is having an affair. Whereas murder is both a sin according to the ten commandments and a crime according to the law. We cannot take this however to mean that the law and religion are one in the same or should be one in the same.
Imagine for a second what would happen if the ten commandments were our system of law. Each of the ten commandments warns us against what are considered mortal sins which would probably be the equivalent in our justice system of crimes punishable by life imprisonment or death. So imagine what our society would be like if having an affair meant the death penalty or disobeying your parents meant life in jail. That’s not the kind of world I would want to live in.
But what we forget is that there are people living in that world right now. In some Middle Eastern countries, women are put to death for having affairs. Children who disobey their parents are killed or severly punished. And then in addition to all of that, people kill just because they don’t believe in the same religion. This brings me to an interesting point. In our world today, there is a clash of interests between three main religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is absurd. These three religions call things by different names, have a few different beliefs on a few different things but in all the major aspects of a religion they are essentially the same. They are all monotheistic, they are all Abrahamic, they all have a Holy Book, and most importantly, they all believe in the same God called by different names. So, why all the fighting?
When church and state are combined, religion becomes dangerous. Most religions advocate spreading of the “good word” and many people take this too far and use force to do this when the original intention was innocent. When a church becomes too powerful and controls the government and the people entirely, it stops being a religion and becomes a cult. This is why the separation of church and state is so important.
For those that believe that the separation of church and state means the abolishment of religion, here is my answer to that. This is not the case at all. The separation of church and state is not meant to turn people against religion or to negatively comment on religion, it’s sole purpose is to prevent the intermingling of religion and government for reasons stated above. Religion is not political nor should it be forced to be. Religion is about morality. The ten commandments are a moral code, not a body of laws. We have to keep this in mind.
There are countries like Israel and Great Britain that fuction without the Separation of Church and State but I think this is a big risk to take, particularly in a country like the United States where religious groups are so numerous. To make one religion the supreme law of the land would be to go against the words of the Constituion and Thomas Jefferson who believed that everyone had the right to practice whatever religion they chose. I believe everyone has something to learn from religion and I think morality should be forwarded in any way possible, but the law is the law and that is the way it should stay.
