-Anecdotal Hook Our dollar bills have the quote of “in God we trust” and our Pledge of Allegiance has “one nation under God”. The Supreme Court now has a new judge who has strictly made decision based on his faith. Their faiths may not be the same as you and I profess. Your religion may not be the same as his and he may not have a religion at all. We have been taught about the US Constitution since we were in elementary school, I remember singing a song about James Madison writing about the Constitution which includes the 10 amendments.
The first amendment is the freedom of the people to exercise any belief hey choose to follow. This was in 1787 and Madison purposely wrote this amendment to break away from how the British ruled over them. Ever since the Constitution was signed and passed, people expressed their beliefs whether it was religious or spiritual freely. In 2014 the estimated number of total religions in the world was 4,200. Although this amendment was created the big question is, why do some states cannot seem to break away from the Christian church and understand church and state do not go hand and hand anymore.
Religion does matter believe it or not, it has now become a world wide rgument of trusting one another based on what they choose to believe in. The United States has an estimated total number of 325 million people living here. For a state and even our country to think we all worship the same God is something impossible to think about. We as a country can still value our Constitution by respecting all ranges of religion not just Christianity. Opening opinion Good afternoon fellow peers of Anaheim High School I am Andrea Carrillo and I am here to speak about something all of us, the younger generation need to speak more about. ,200 religions on this planet are taught and followed.
Do you know at least of a quarter of them? No, you may know some of the common ones like Christianity, Catholic, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. Religion may be important to value to some people, we know religion is important to our government. As I stated before the Christian church is important to us that we pledge it every morning from a young age and use our dollar bills with the quote of “in God we trust”“. Our country acknowledges that we care about the freedom of you and I and other the other countries that can’t enjoy the right they are born with, an unalienable right.
So why is the United States Government gnoring the thousands of other religions there is? We are all progressive people alone and together we can make this country progressive to so we can change the government and show them we are all fighting for the minorities religions and their recognition. Counterpoint (my argument) The new year of 2017 was a big year for our Government, a new president and one of his biggest decisions was who was going to fill the spot of the Supreme Court. Justice Neil Gorsuch is the new Justice who is going to fill in Justice Antonin Scalia place in the court.
He is a republican who strongly supports his faith and as mentioned it various times. When he was elected he gave his speech and thanked his wife friends and his faith that gave him strength. When Neil was asked about this topic of church and state even he said he would likely side with church over state. Neil was praised over and over by churches because he has voiced his opinion on various cases of church and state. According to Newsweek who made an article about Neil, he openly talked about him being raised in a Catholic home and attending Catholic schools.
You are wondering why would he matter on this topic and how can one person change the view of hurch and state. Well it is not just him, it is the people who are running our government that well could change the laws on abortion, contraceptives and cases in a courtroom. Our country was founded on freedom of individuals following the teachings of who they choose based on their own personal beliefs (restatement). So choosing a belief to some is considered a big decision, to our founding fathers it also was one.
They broke away from the religious styled government of the British and strictly professed no one including the government can establish a religion for a single country. So ever since the founding of America we have been progressing and the world has been progressing with us. Due to all of this progression we have slowly started to become more open minded, but all we need to do is break the last barrier. Imagine being a person on trial for a crime being committed. Let’s say you did not identify yourself as a Christian maybe a Muslim or Islamic.
I know what you are thinking, why would this matter to the jury or to the judge? (rhetorical question) In the state that you could be in would matter, for example in Oklahoma it’s percentage for how igh of a religious state it is since 2016 is 60. 58%. On the website bestplaces they offer you the percentage of violence in states, cost of living and it’s climate. They also have a section called religion and it says the percentage in their is 60. 58 overall and their three top highest ones is Catholic at 4. 90%, Baptist at 26. 02% and then Christian is 12. 26%.
Along with how religious they truly are is they value the 10 commandments, it even is imprinted on their monument of the state capital. So if they know you don’t follow what they believe in they could be harder n your punishment. Obviously this would not be fair at all to anyone who is Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic or Atheist because religion is something completely different from who you are as a person and you shouldn’t be judged for it. A strong important reason on why we all should believe in separation of church and state is described in one word, equality.
Equality between the Christianity and the Muslim. Equality between Christianity, Muslim and Islamic. Equality between Hinduism, Christianity, Muslim and Islamic. Equality from what you and I profess, equality from what you and the erson across the hall choose to believe. After reading so much about different religions I was curious to know how much religions are there. Reference and Psychology Today surveyed and estimated there is more than 4 thousand religions and yours may not be the same to mine and mine to his and his to hers and so on.
That is something that will always remain throughout the years, we don’t follow the same God, teachings of whomever or the philosophy of whomever. So because we all want equality right? It’s 2017 we all need to be treated the same and the government of America or even your own state houldn’t have more favor to a certain religion opposed to your own. We trust our government to make laws that will better not for one single person, but for all of us. Bill Flax from Forbes Magazine made an article on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
One thing that stood out to me was how we allow people to make the laws for us to better our country but may not have the same religion in mind as us. So here we have a thing such as religion stopping the people in charge of making laws it affects all of us. It may not be directly but it could indirectly. Maybe to someone you know like a relative or a friend. Things like for example same sex marriage, could affect them since some states do not agree with same sex marriage it affects people who want to marry the person they are in love with.
While doing my research for people who were denied to marry the love of their life I came across a video on NBC. In 2015 there was a county clerk, Kim Davis, who refused to give marriage licenses to because same sex marriage was against her religion. She was jailed since there was a video of her refusing to allow the licences and is planning to return to So here we have a woman refusing to allow people to marry just because she is against it going back to work where she could deny someone again. Well that should not matter because anyone can marry whomever they choose to.
A person working for the government has no right to violate the freedom of the choice that a person wants to marry. Opposing Argument However the constitution is 226 years old, and change is something very difficult especially when it would include 321. 4 million people. People like to be old fashioned and may be afraid to move forward. Numerous people identify themselves s Christians and it is the most common religion in the USA the second is Protestant and then Catholic according to the Washington Post since 2014.
I see why they would not want to change because they want to represent our country as a whole and making us seem united. At the same time uniting us does not mean all of us are the same specifically in the perspectives we see. We all have different opinions into who we believe in, what we believe in or the teachings of whomever. Recently Donald Trump had a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast and talked about protecting the religious freedom of all of the eople in the United States.
He said this specific statement that stood out to me in the CBS article they wrote, our president and vice-president said “freedom is a gift from God not the government. ” Although, I do agree that the government does not give you freedom as a gift because it’s a right from the second you’re born, the whole idea of the God giving you freedom is not for everyone. What about the atheists who don’t believe in a God? Who gives them their right of freedom? They get the RIGHT not gift of freedom to when they are born. And the Buddhists? Who gives them their right because they onsider they Budda more of a teacher than a God.
Now do we see how all this ties in together is where government decide to try to put God into the mix of how to run a whole country and it does not tie into together. Closing Statement Our country was founded on freedom of individuals following the teachings of who they choose based on their own personal beliefs. (restatement) Choosing who and what you believe in is important to many people. Our government, state and country should respect that oppose to try to put us all in the category of Christianity when there are 4 thousand other things to choose to follow.
