PART VI
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Church-State Separation:
A Keystone to Peace
Clark Moeller, January 2004 --
[Copyright 2004, Pennsylvania Alliance for Democracy -- Printing, copying
and distribution is encouraged with full attribution.]
CONCLUSIONS
There are five overriding conclusions to be drawn from the historical
record presented in this paper. First, church-state separation has achieved
the best record of maintaining peace among people of different faiths. As a
result, it has advanced the prospects for achieving a peaceful world.
Historically, achievements of this magnitude have become the common
foundation of moral obligations embraced by people world-wide. Therefore,
if we value domestic and international peace, we should be promoting
church-state separation explicitly.
Second, democracies have a better record for avoiding war with
other democracies, avoiding famine, and achieving economic prosperity for
their citizens than any other form of government. The stability of
established democracies depends on the integrity of their civil rights.
Church-state separation is part of our interdependent civil rights in the
United States. Therefore, protecting church-state separation is essential
to protecting our democracy.
Third, church-state separation has proven to be the most effective
strategy for protecting religious liberty. Therefore, religious leaders who
want to retain their institutions' religious freedoms tomorrow, free of
government intervention, should be working to protect everyone's religious
freedom today. Protecting church-state separation should be an
institutional imperative for them.
Fourth, and unfortunately, there is a shift toward theocracy taking
place in our government. This change is being promoted from the highest
levels within our government and is paving the way for some clergy to
leverage their political influence to achieve for their religious
organizations the advantage enjoyed by state-established churches in other
countries. As a result of this overreaching, the American ideal of
protecting every individual's religious liberty is fading, particularly for
members of minority religions and those who are not religiously affiliated.
Finally, as religious liberty fades with the erosion of
church-state separation, public trust in this civil right will diminish. As
self-defensive behaviors compensate for the loss of trust, intolerance will
move closer to the surface of social behavior. As intolerance becomes more
common, peaceful co-existence among religious groups, and between these and
government will be more difficult to maintain. This is a predictable
outcome as suspicions surface about religiously discriminatory federal
funding, regulation, and law enforcement. Such perceptions of injustice are
the conditions that breed violence. Therefore, citizens should work to
reestablish church-state separation, because maintaining a civil peace that
exists is more efficient than trying to rebuild peace after violence has
erupted.
In summary, reestablishing church-state separation is a keystone to
sustaining a culture of tolerance and trust on which our civil rights
depend, and these, in turn, are essential to our democracy, and peace among
religious communities.
clich here to continue: Criticisms of the 'Church-State Separation' Concept
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