where religion and politics meet

Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is what you believe about life: what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what are the rules, are there any rules, what is the meaning of life, what is important, what is not.

If a worldview includes a god/God, it is called a religion. If a bunch of people have the same religion, they give it a name.

Nations have worldviews too, a prevailing way of looking at life that directs government policies and laws and that contributes significantly to the culture. Politics is the outworking of that worldview in public life.

We are being told today that the United States is and has always been a secular nation, which is practical atheism.

But our country could not have been founded as a secular nation, because a secular country could not guarantee freedom of religion. Secular values would be higher than religious ones, and they would supersede them when there was a conflict. Secularism sees religion only as your personal preferences, like your taste in food, music, or movies. It does not see religion, any religion, as being true.

But even more basic, our country was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings. But what God, and how did the Founders know that He had? Islam, for example, does not believe in unalienable rights. It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights, and it was the Bible that informed the Founders of that. The courts would call that a religious opinion; the Founders would call that a fact.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’ have the United States of America.

A secular nation cannot give or even recognize unalienable rights, because there is no higher power in a secular nation than the government.

Unalienable rights are the basis for the American concept of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty require a high moral code that restrains bad behavior among its people; otherwise the government will need to make countless laws and spend increasingly larger amounts of money on law enforcement.

God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments were always important parts of our public life, including our public schools, until 1963, when the court called supreme ruled them unconstitutional, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding.

As a secular nation, the government now becomes responsible to take care of its people. It no longer talks about unalienable rights, because then they would have to talk about God, so it creates its own rights. Government-given rights are things that the government is required to provide for its people, which creates an enormous expense which is why our federal government is now $22 trillion in debt.

Our country also did not envision a multitude of different religions co-existing in one place, because the people, and the government, would then be divided on the basic questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our Constitution, which we fought a war to be able to enact, states, among other things, that our government exists for us to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It could not do this unless it had a clear vision of what it considers to be true, a vision shared with the vast majority of the people in this country.

I want to engage the government, the culture, and the people who live here to see life again from a Christian perspective and to show how secularism is both inadequate and just plain wrong.

Because religion deals with things like God, much of its contents is not subject to the scientific method, though the reasons why one chooses to believe in God or a particular religion certainly demand serious investigation, critical thinking, and a hunger for what is true.

Science and education used to be valuable tools in the search for truth, but science has chosen to answer the foundational questions of life without accepting the possibility of any supernatural causes, and education generally no longer considers the search to be necessary, possible, or worthwhile.

poligion: 1) the proper synthesis of religion and politics 2) the realization, belief, or position that politics and religion cannot be separated or compartmentalized, that a person’s religion invariably affects one’s political decisions and that political decisions invariably stem from one’s worldview, which is what a religion is.

If you are new to this site, I would encourage you to browse through the older articles. They deal with a lot of the more basic issues. Many of the newer articles are shorter responses to particular problems.

Visit my other websites theimportanceofhealing blogspot.com where I talk about healing and my book of the same name and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com where I am posting all my other Bible studies. Follow this link to my videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-RztuRKdCEQzgbhp52dCw

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Larry Craig

Saturday, November 1, 2014

a letter to the archdiocese of Chicago about schools


Friday, October 31, 2014

Archdiocese of Chicago
835 N. Rush St.
Chicago IL 60611-2030

Re: Catholic schools (closings)

Greetings!

The Chicago Sun-Times a few days had an article about the closing of a number of Catholic schools.

I wrote the following letter to the editor:

More Catholic schools are closing, and we all lose for it.  And, no, I am not a Catholic.  Some might dispute whether the education there is better than in public schools, but having more options for parents is always better than fewer.  Think of it like grocery stores.  Would you rather have only one grocery store to choose from rather than having a number of them compete for your business?
Why are they closing?  Lower enrollment.  But why is there lower enrollment?  The only clue in the Sun-Times article is that “with the economy, people can’t afford it.”
I submit that it is a lot more than just the economy.  We wanted to send our kids to private school, but we couldn’t afford it.  And that was when the economy was good.  The killer is property taxes, 2/3 of which or more goes to pay for public schools.  We need for parents who pay for private school expenses to be able to deduct from their income taxes the amount of those expenses up to at least the amount that they paid for public schools on their property taxes. 
But some will say that we can’t afford to do that.  Besides being unfair to parents who have to pay for education twice, I have long advocated for public education to be paid for through income taxes.  We all benefit when everybody gets a good education.  Wealthier areas could always raise more money through property taxes if they choose, but a good basic education should be paid for on one’s ability to pay for it and not on the value of their property, which has no bearing on their ability to pay taxes on it.
The unfairness of this was made very clear to me during a period of extended unemployment when my property taxes still had to be paid.

This proposal would provide more options for parents and better funding for the schools that need it.

I believe that because taxes, all taxes but particularly property taxes, are constantly being pushed higher due to out-of-control government spending, private schools, like yours, will continue to see declining enrollment.
The fastest ways that I see that this trend can be turned around is through funding public education by income taxes or giving parents school vouchers.  Vouchers will be harder to get Springfield to pass, because it looks like taking money from public schools and giving it to private schools. 

My proposal is for the state to fund a good solid public education for all students through the income tax.  The state would set a dollar amount per student, and this would be raised through income taxes.  The part of the property tax bills for public education would then be reduced by an equal amount.  Wealthier school districts could still raise more through their property taxes.  Then all those parents who send their children to a private school would receive a tax credit up to the amount that they would have owed on their current property taxes for public schools. 

The idea here is: why should a parent pay twice for their child’s education?  This would make a better case, as well as a better sound bite, to push for this change.

As meritorious as I believe my plan to be, I don’t think this is an idea that the archdiocese should push for directly.  It would seem self-serving.  But if Springfield received 50,000 or 100,000 letters from concerned parents, they would probably listen.  You would need to push your people to write letters and make phone calls.  You would also need to make this as easy as possible for them, like providing all the contact information, but I would strongly urge not to use form letters.  I think that blunts the effect.

There is, however, one major danger to this proposal.  Lawmakers as a group cannot be trusted.  There will have to be strict oversight to see that the money raised is the right amount and that it goes where it is supposed to go.

I wish you the best and hope your school system expands and prospers to record levels.

Cordially,


Larry Craig



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