Separation of Church and State

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter. This letter was written to the Danbury Baptist Association, and in it the phrase “Separation of Church and State” was used. This phrase has since become an invaluable part of our Government, necessary in protecting our freedoms and our lives. However, Religion and State are not fully separate, as Jefferson would have wished. Instead, we live in a society where many of the important decisions our government makes are determined via religious bias or based on religious knowledge, rather than what is truly factual or good for the people.

I’m sure you’ve all heard Rick Perry’s recent ad. He wants to make the country stronger. Through Faith. He’s not alone. There are many fundamentalist politicians out there who can make decisions that hugely impact your life, and those decisions are based on religion instead of reality. Take for example, John Shimkus. He is the chair of a US Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. He is creating policy that will have a huge impact on how we react to an important phenomenon… based off of Noah’s Ark. “The earth will end only when god declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth, this earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

Now, those are high-reaching policies. This lack of separation is much more severe than just that, and changes our everyday life in catastrophic ways. Let me tell you the story of a little 2-year-old girl, Amiyah White. Amiyah was a beautiful young girl in Alabama who attended a religious child-care service. On September 20, 2005 she died. She was left unattended, forgotten and alone in a van on a hot Alabama summer day and died. Her little heart gave out. She’s not so rare a case either. Just 7 years earlier, DeMyreon Lindley was left in a church van for 10 hours. TEN HOURS. The church day-care leaders were never held responsible for their gross negligence that directly killed these children. Had they been secular, they would have gone straight to jail. But by being affiliated with a church, they were not. This is because Alabama state legislature does not require the food regulations, staff training, staff-to-child ratios or unannounced state inspections of religious childcares that it requires of secular ones. Many organizations affiliate themselves with a religion just to avoid following the law. And that is just wrong. Alabama is not the only state by any means, 13 states total have some sort of exemption for religious childcare. And these church-based groups are funded, thanks to subsidies, from your tax dollars. Thanks to this biased legislature, the American People are funding negligence and death, brought to you by religion.

Now, let’s move on to another horrid occurrence that is allowed thanks to the bias we have in our government system towards Religion. Let’s talk about Alex Morris, a 4 year old who had a fever and congestion. Instead of getting him the simple antibiotics that would have saved his life, his parents instead brought him to church, where he was covered in oil by the congregation and prayed for for a duration of 46 days. He died. Or how about

Madeline Neumann, who had a treatable and minor form of Diabetes, and rather than receive treatment she died because her parents would rather pray. There’s also the horrible case of Jessica Crank. She had a rare form of bone cancer, but it was easily treatable. Rather than take Jessica to an emergency room like a clinic told her, Jessica’s mother instead took her home to pray. Her treatable cancer turned in to a tumor on her shoulder. A tumor that was literally, and I cannot stress this enough, not figuratively but in all reality the size of a basketball. Can you imagine the agonizing pain she must have felt? The daily torture? All of this was because of “Faith Healing”, a faulty practice that has resulted in over 350,000 deaths, 300,000 injuries and more than 3 Billion in economic damages. And more than 38 states have legislature that allows it, including lenient legislature in regards to medical neglect for children, as was the case for Jessica, And Madeline, and Alex. Parents have the right to do whatever it is they want with their own bodies, but the instant their beliefs directly harm another, ESPECIALLY A CHILD, their beliefs should not also protect them from the law. They should be prosecuted within the full extent of criminal neglect.

Now, I’ve made the problem fairly clear. Religious bias and the lack of Separation of Church and State harms us in immense ways. From environmental policy to the deaths of innocent children, to potential presidential candidates like Rick Perry who say to “just hand [everything] over to god and say, ‘god, you’re going to have to fix this’”. So, let me tell you what a world where the crumbled Wall of Separation is repaired would look like; A world where any organization or group can purchase land without being bullied out by megachurches. A world where there will be no bias in the legal definition of marriage, regardless of the religious one. A world where there will be one consistent standard for health, education and all policies, no matter the religious aspects. A world where religious concerns will not impede scientific progress, where countless lives could be saved and bettered thanks to the effects of stem cell research and other innovations.

But instead, we live in a world where the Creationist Museum can plan a new expansion and receive a $40 MILLION DOLLAR Tax Cut from it, taken DIRECTLY FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. It’s by far past the point of being a question of whether you believe in god or not. It is now a moral question with a definite answer. Religious bias in law is morally and objectively wrong, and it’s our part to fix this disaster. Thank you.

Works Cited 

"Child Hyperthermia Death in Vehicle." Golden Gate Weather Services. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://ggweather.com/heat/36_2005.htm>. 

Jefferson Died For Our Sins. Dir. Jim Lawrence. Perf. Karen Kearns. DVD. 

"What's the Harm in Believing in Faith Healing?" What's The Harm? Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://whatstheharm.net/faithhealing.html>.