The purpose of Our Conscience weblog is to facilitate a greater discussion and understanding of church and state separation in our community and in others. Underlying this is the value that each individual should be allowed to follow the dictates of his or her own conscience without influence, coercion, or direction from the State when it comes to matters of religion.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Huckabee 4 theocracy

"But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onHkywYc_1M&v3

The Taliban would be Happy, at least if it were their view of God that was being enshrined into law. Most of our ancestors left Europe to avoid this.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Huckabee encourages churches to violate tax exempt status

Huckabee today encouraged voters to "hijack your church's bus" to "get people to the caucus who are going to vote for me." Surely he is aware that tax exempt churches can not participate in activities to support a particular candidate.

If he would have said hijack a church bus to assist your neighbors in doing their civic duty by voting it would have been excellent. But if this is an indication of things to come he may be seeking clergy "who are going to vote for me" to turn over their mailing lists and turn their churches into call centers for Jesus/Huckabee. He may find that more religious folks will be voting for Obama or Edwards because of, among many things, his lack of respect for the idea of a religiously neutral government.