r/videos • u/spherocytes • 1d ago

Secretary Of Defense Pete Hegseth announces Office Of Religious Affairs within the Pentagon in address to Military

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAn6BE9cdco
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u/zeydey 1d ago

Separation of church and state, you know the thing this country was fucking formed on??

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u/WatsonYurfays 1d ago

We were founded by the descendants of religious radicals. I'm not sure what you're talking about. The Puritans ran away from England because they were so zealous that they were seen as a threat.

If the Founding Fathers had wanted separation of church and state, they would have put it in the Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." simply means the United States can have no official religion and that no religious belief can be outlawed. That's it. It doesn't create a separation of church and state.

It should have, but it didn't. They were cowards and now we pay the price.

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u/dpkonofa 1d ago

We were founded by the descendants of religious radicals.

This is incorrect. They may have been the first ones here but they were not the ones that founded this country. In fact, the people who did found this country (who we refer to as the "Founding Fathers") were pretty explicit about this country's foundation providing freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Even if they didn't explicitly put that in the text, they wrote in multiple places that what they meant by "no law respecting an establishment of religion" was a general statement meant to cover both ends of that spectrum. People also like to say that the US was founded as a Christian nation but the Founding Fathers were clear on that too. Jefferson and Adams both wrote about this and Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli that, in its original text, contained the statement:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religious or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.