I most heartily agree with Katherine Ripley's Jan. 19 column about the establishment of religion, titled "(Ripley's) Believe it or not." There is no way the Founders would have ever allowed any elected official to make any political decisions based on religious conviction.
Can you imagine the chaos that would have ensued if the people who wrote the Constitution had believed that political decisions could be made based on a religious belief in rights given to them by "Nature's God" or a "Creator"? Why, they might have even declared independence from Great Britain! Fortunately, none of these people believed there might be a difference between establishing a specific religious organization as a state religion and making decisions based on religious conviction.
And it is a good thing, too! You might have had extremist Christians running around saying things like, "Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms" while opposing slavery! Oh, Abraham Lincoln did that. Maybe it is a good thing that religious conviction has strongly impacted political decisions in the past, and maybe that trend should continue.
Michael Watson\nCLAS IV
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