thread: 2007-02-13 : Exorcism
On 2007-02-26, MikeRM wrote:
OK, my mistake on the prayer thing, I had seemingly received the wrong impression.
Thinking about all this some more:
Should the church (in the institutional sense) be separated from the state (in the institutional sense)? My radical Anabaptist response is, Of course it should. Constantine's establishment of Christianity as the Roman state religion was one of the worst things that ever happened to Christianity, and led to most of the other bad things.
However, should spirituality be kept out of public life? Very different question, and my answer here is, not only should it not, it cannot be, since people are spiritual beings* and public life inevitably expresses what is important to people.
So in a pluralist society, I think the only thing that will work even most of the time is to say, Yes, we recognize that spiritual expression of many kinds is important to people and that attempts to keep it out of public life are both quixotic and repressive. However, as a society we, including our government, will not collectively endorse or promote any particular spiritual content. This is just, in a way, switching tightropes, but that's the tightrope I'd rather be on. As a Christian I am personally committed to particular spiritual content, but given that I believe that God is at work in all people, I'm also committed to not imposing that content on others.
Of course other people's content specifically includes imposing their content on others, so what do you do?
I don't know.
*You can interpret "people are spiritual beings" as "people have a natural tendency towards religious expression" if that makes you more comfortable.
