Help make September 28th “Church-State Separation Day”
Sep 2nd, 2008 | By Chris Ray | Category: NewsEarlier today, Pharyngula blogger PZ Myers reported on the right-wing Alliance Defense Fund’s proposed “Pulpit Initiative.” As part of this initiative the Alliance Defense Fund, which is an obliquely Christian legal think tank dedicated to abolition the separation of church and state, is calling on preachers and clergymen nationwide to spend this September 28th deliberately violating the terms of their religious tax exemption by publicly endorsing political candidates for high office in the 2008 election.
To counter, the Bates College Secular Student Alliance has already invited the famous church-state separation activist Ellery Schempp to deliver a talk at Bates College on the importance of church-state separation on the day of the Pulpit Initiative. It is this author’s hope that, even on such short notice, CFI and SSA groups nationwide will take the initiative to make September 28th into a national day of free, public events designed to promote the history and value of the principle of the separation of Church and State in the United States.
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GREAT!
Here’s encouraging all bloggers to actively promote this event. I’ll be doing so. I suggest emailing all bloggers and webmasters you know who care about church state separation to encourage them to post on this day - even a simple cut-and-pasting of the posting here on Edger.
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Chris Ray Reply:
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 am
I am humbled by your endorsement. I worry only that self-promoting my article would be seen as a bit facile. BUT, with the Frame Problem on my side, and on the side of beating the Alliance Defense Fund’s crazy kamikaze theocracy, how can we fail!
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Here! here! I’m going to submit my ‘defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali’ (formal request to defect from the Catholic Church) on that day.
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A church-state-separation day is a brilliant idea, but I’d rather pick another date (maybe December 15, the date when the Bill of Rights became effective) because September 28th is going to be interesting enough with the Pulpit Initiative. I hope that the IRS will penalize every single one of the participants. If they want to stop having to bend over for the government, they should stop demanding money for it.
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[...] have been either essentially academic treatments of religion or politics, or they have been current events. But I, like most college students, do (somehow) grow tired of engaging with the most complicated [...]
[...] Edger has reported previously, the Alliance Defense Fund’s so-called “Pulpit Initiative,” a plan that [...]