Religion should stay out of politics
Ms. Cole’s 2nd Block English 12
By Brent Hardy
Religion- it has been said that if God wasn’t there in the first place that people would have invented him. It gives many people the hope and the faith to get up and face each day. However, fanatic devotion to a particular religion can be detrimental to the way government is run. Religion should stay separated from politics because they corrupt one another, can bring about atrocities against those who do not follow a particular organization, and cause people’s freedom of choice to be taken away.
Religion and politics are mutually exclusive; in their pure forms, they should have absolutely nothing to do with one another. When the Baptist congregation was founded in the 19th Century, the leaders strictly forbade members to become involved in political maneuverings. However, the leaders later had a schism that brought the ministers into the political arena. Now the Baptists are in the forefront of political activism, bringing the influence of their religion into decision making for people of every religion around the country. Our forefathers recognized the dangers of the church manipulating the government when they made the “separation of church and state” clause in the Constitution. They knew that if religions started dictating national policy, it would take away from people’s right to choose their own religion.
More atrocities have been committed in the name of religion than any other institution. From the Jewish and Roman persecution of early Christians, to the Crusades when Christians tried to eliminate the Jews, to the inquisition, where Christians tried to eliminate every other “heathen” religion, to the current state of Israel where Moslems and Jews try to wipe each other off the face of the world, even the terrorist attacks on America were an attempt to destroy another religion on orders from God. The strange thing is, these religions are all passive at heart, and the religion is only a political tool whose gains are largely in “liberating” the territory held by the loser.
Religion always has a certain set of rules that determine what is right and wrong. Unfortunately, most religions’ rules are different from all others. For instance, most orthodox Christians believe that marriage to a single partner is the only way to have relations with members of the opposite sex without sin. However, Mormons believe that polygamy is acceptable, while unorthodox Christians believe that God sanctions relations if they are between a couple that are deeply in love. Followers of earth-based religions such as Wicca believe that anything is acceptable as long as it does not harm another or take away their free will. This causes problems in government in that it takes away people’s God-given right to choose the good path from the bad. If every sin was illegal, and the government sanctioned a particular religion, then people wouldn’t have the freedom to go down the “wrong road.” People should be able to determine their own path to salvation, and should not have one handed to them by the religious politicians.
Religion and politics have proven to mix as well as oil and water. Yet men always seem to have the desire to work their religious and theological beliefs into the law books. This offense against the basic human right to choose what faith they will follow should not be allowed to continue. If a person wishes to do what others think is wrong, why should they be stopped? Who knows, they might have stumbled onto a new path to salvation themselves.