Keep religion out of government
It’s my understanding that associate Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision wrote: “In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the [Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States] against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.” It’s also my understanding that Jefferson, one of the oft-quoted and revered founding fathers worked tirelessly to prevent direct references to particular prophets, religions, sects, cults, etc., from being included in the language of the documents that are the basis of U.S. law and the functions of U.S. government institutions.
I’m not sure of Glenn Johansen’s intent when he singles out in his letter published in the Feb. 21 West Hawaii Today the horrific cruelties perpetrated by terrorists claiming Islamic justification for extraordinarily vile and heartless acts that are making headlines in the media lately. As he indicates, these groups present a clear danger when they gain political or military power. However, anyone who imagines that such horrors and cruelties are exclusively limited to Islamic fundamentalists needs only to examine history to learn that Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Polytheists and countless other religious groups both great and small have perpetrated unkind or overtly violent acts against those they deem to be somehow unworthy or subordinate.
It seems clear to me that nations whose governments are closely or even casually associated with religious organizations and their adherents tend to exclude or marginalize populations and subgroups within their borders. Populations suffer in small or great ways as a result of such alliances.
In the current climate, anyone can clearly see the perils of “official” religion-state affiliation as they are practiced by certain nations of the Middle East. It also seems to me that even small incursions of distinctly religious expression and proselytizing which compromise the strictly secular, “everyone welcome here” status of government institutions like our Hawaii Volcanoes National Park should be conducted elsewhere. Messages of “peace, love, and forgiveness” that are directly attributed to religious figures can be freely expressed outside the gates of government facilities and in the mosques, churches, temples and synagogues where communities of the faithful guaranteed the legal right to share them are free to congregate and practice their favored religious activity as the founding fathers intended.
Michael Helms
Volcano