Dear editor:
In complete opposition to the First Amendment’s prohibition against mixing religion and government, state rep. John Bear wants more religion in government.
In a recent Cowboy State Daily article, he is paraphrased as saying that while he believes in the separation of church and state, he does not think church and state should be separated in the lawmaking process.
In other words, he believes in the separation of church and state until he doesn’t, until it gets in the way. That is the Christian Nationalist viewpoint, and he is saying it out loud.
The separation of church and state is not a one-way street as the Christian Nationalists believe, that while government must stay out of the affairs of the church, the church has every right to meddle in the affairs of government.
The whole point of the establishment and free exercise clauses in the First Amendment is to keep religion and government at arm’s length from each other.
The framers of the Constitution knew the danger of mixing religion and government.
They knew that the only way to ensure freedom of religious belief to everyone equally no matter what that belief might be was to keep government out of religion and religion out of government.
Christianity may be the dominant religion in this nation, but it is not the only one. However, Christians seem to think they are somehow privileged and have a right, using the laws, to force their beliefs onto the rest of us.
The concept of separation of church and state in the Constitution is there to prevent that from happening.
Bear seems to think that the only path to morality is through religious belief. He believes that things would be a whole lot better if we had more moral and upright people serving in government.
The only problem with Bear’s view is that morality and religion do not necessarily go hand in hand. Just because a person has a religious belief is no guarantee they have a strong moral compass.
As a matter of fact, some of the worst atrocities in human history have been committed by people who believed they were morally superior to everyone else because they were doing their god’s work.
Take for example the anti-transgender bills that came out of the Wyoming legislature this past session. Is it moral and upright to vilify a whole group of citizens because a book of ancient writings labels those people as an abomination?
That is what happens when Christian legislators are allowed to insert, not their morality, but their religious beliefs into the lawmaking process.
Bear thinks that the only way to guarantee freedom of religion is to bring more religious voices into the lawmaking process. That is nonsense.
The only way to guarantee freedom of religion is by following these words “religiously”: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
Sincerely,
Randy Vlach, Casper
