JFK on Separation of Church and State

Thank you, Lois, for introducing this:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all….

“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end—where all men and all churches are treated as equal—where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice—where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind—and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”

Very few people have influenced us so strongly that just the mere mention of their initials is regarded as enough for certain identification. John F. Kennedy was one of those. Love him or hate him, shock accompanied news of his death in the third year of his first term.

LBJ became president with that event, which seems to have been the marker that ended an era. Vietnam arrived with LBJ. Social unity in America declined with that and has never really been revived. LBJ served about six years, then handed the reigns over to Nixon. ¹Modern Republicans, it seems, don't get shot, they get impeached, and Nixon passed it over to Ford during his second term. Jimmy Carter could smile and chew gum at the same time, an act that kept Ford from enjoying a second term, but Reagan proved himself capable of out-smiling Jimmy.

The government popped back into Republican hands once again. America, however, refused to pull itself out of its economical malaise and after giving Reagan a second chance to straighten things out, followed by dour Republican George HW Bush, hopeful Americans turned to Democrat Bill Clinton. The economy blossomed, but nastiness lurked in the background. No longer hungry, Americans paid attention to that and, when two candidates with two varieties of stumbling dialog faced off, another Bush swore to get even with the world for his papa's downfall.

Republicans have proven what Bill Barnum knew to be a fact: There's a sucker born very minute. Tell a good story over a long enough period of time, and you can convince enough people they ought to be scared but that you can take care of their problems.

"No problems?— don't worry, we'll invent a few and tell you all about them. We will, in fact, invent so many of them to tell you about, and hire so many people to tell you about them, you won't know which way to turn in order to feel safe. Very few of them will be real, but don't worry about that: We have your interest, now, and you are finally paying attention. We want to tell you about a few solutions to all these problems we made up, and get you to go along with us on them. It's for your own good, you know? Do you feel worried about your freedoms? –your future? Why worry about that? As soon as we get Israel in shape with a country of their own, God is coming back and the Earth is going to go away. Iraq has to be taken care of, to keep it from interfering. You had better stick with us on this. We have Jesus on our side. You'll want to be there when it's time for the ascension. Hey, the Jews are going along with us on this. They don't believe in Jesus, so they think they're taking advantage of us. I can't wait to see the horror on their faces when he does come back."

I won't say for sure, but Jimmy Carter may have been the last in a short line of presidents to support church and state separation in our government. Our downfall may have begun during the period ruled by what became known as McCarthyism, which pitted a religion, Christianity, against a political system known as Communism, by calling the communists "atheistic".

Although McCarthy fell out of favor, the idea had worked well enough so that radical rigid right Dominionists decided the dupery could be ²developed and Americans could be made fools of with it once again. Hence, you have the America of today. I really doubt it was Barnum who warned us. "You get fooled once, that's a mistake. You get fooled twice, and that is stupidity." Are we stupid? Only a little more time will tell.

___________________________________________

Footnotes:

¹ Abraham Lincoln was, of course, a Republican. RETURN

² Ref: Moral Politics, by George Lakoff             RETURN