Comments | teir_garten: This is Not America

teir_garten

This is Not America

Feb 13, 2009 19:49

Found this via a friend in the UK. It's a quote from Tony Blair on his speech to Barack Obama. In this particular portion of the speech, Blair was discussing his spiritual awakening and how it effected his presidency.

"I do not mean by this to blur the correct distinction between the realms of religious and political authority. In Britain we are ( Read more... )

Comments 5

(The comment has been removed)

teir_garten February 14 2009, 12:38:01 UTC

Thank you! And I'm glad you enjoyed it!

zigamorph February 14 2009, 06:53:36 UTC

Here the president ends a speech with "God Bless America."

There the queen is the "Defender of the Faith" and the anointed head of the established Church of England, an entity itself whose creation ignited a century and a half of civil war, earning Mary I the nickname "Bloody Mary" for burning religious dissenters at the stake and eventually leading to the Catholic James II being forced into exile for trying to make himself into a strongman dictator supported by a standing army.

Which would you choose?

teir_garten February 14 2009, 12:36:44 UTC

Here the president ends a speech with "God Bless America."

That's precisely the point being made.

There the queen is the "Defender of the Faith" and the anointed head of the established Church of England

Purely ceremonial and means nothing in practicality.

an entity itself whose creation ignited a century and a half of civil war, earning Mary I the nickname "Bloody Mary" for burning religious dissenters at the stake and eventually leading to the Catholic James II being forced into exile for trying to make himself into a strongman dictator supported by a standing army.Irrelevant. Judging a nation by the actions of it's leaders in the past is only smart if those actions still are implemented today. I remember taking a similar stance towards you not too long ago regarding the Axis Powers during World War Two ( ... )

zigamorph February 14 2009, 14:09:25 UTC

You can't be serious.

It's not purely ceremonial. The Church of England is an established church, meaning that it is funded and maintained at government expense, and to this day civil disabilities are imposed because of religious dissent. One example is that the monarch and members of the royal family in line of succession are actually prohibited by law from marrying a Catholic. Another example is that the Duke of Norfolk, although the hereditary Earl Marshall of England, is prohibited from fully serving in that capacity because he is a Catholic ( ... )

teir_garten February 14 2009, 23:51:59 UTC

The United States, from its earliest days, adopted separation of church and state as a guiding principle, enshrined in the First Amendment. If the president mentions God in a speech once in a while, that's hardly going to spark sectarian violence in the streets.A fair point, sure, but to me, (and I suspect to the civil servant in question) it's not about whether the president mentions God in his speech. It's the same argument against the phrase "One nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance - it's not the phrase itself, it's the larger issue of religion intervening in politics, which happens in America entirely too much to be considered the "leader of the free world" and for a nation which has the concept of complete separation of church and state is enshrined in the Constitution. There's no comparison to President Bush stopping stem-cell research, for example, because of religious protests, or the obnoxious amount of lobbying capabilities permitted by organizations such as the Salvation Army versus some British noble not being ( ... )