Genie Gannett, of the First Amendment Museum in Augusta, comments about religious freedom in her op-ed, “Many ways exist to live your First Amendment freedoms” (May 1, Page A9). She extols the freedom to worship for all faiths. Amen. However, she says nothing about how secular thought and ideals now constitute an established and operating alternative to recognized religion in nearly all facets of public life.

Some have argued that public schools are secularism’s catechetical agent, not by an official edict but as a consequence of the privatizing of recognized faiths. Secularity thus becomes a type of operational public outlook in life and culture, the de facto religion of the public square.

While educational freedom exists for openly faith-based schools, it’s not a freedom that gets back the taxes it pays for so-called “public schools.” This is consistent with Founder favorite John Locke (1632-1704), whose views on government were designed to privatize religion in hopes of tamping down the proliferation of religious warfare in Europe after the Reformation. He wrote a watered-down version of Christianity, hoping to provide a basis for a shared, less controversial religious outlook and then relegated that to private worship, thus taking “recognized” religion out of the public square and effectively turning it into a prop for the state.

We’ve inherited Locke’s version of “religious tolerance” and are now living out what happens in a country defining religion so narrowly and individual freedom so broadly as to shamelessly and legally trash both the womb of Mother Earth and the wombs of pregnant mothers. What’s next?

Alan Toth
Rockland

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