this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
756 points (99.0% liked)

News

23424 readers
4592 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled that the state corrections agency can’t force an incarcerated atheist and secular humanist to participate in religiously-affiliated programming to be eligible for parole.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Let me try a different argument:

The separation of church and state has forced American denominations to compete in a marketplace for souls/money, and they have become ruthlessly efficient corporatized entities, using marketing and business-process management, and exploiting tax advantages and high switching costs.

Meanwhile, in Europe, you have official state Catholicism or Protestantism-flavors, which are moribund, inspire little passion, and most everyone is either atheist, agnostic, or un-passioned.

[–] MostlyBirds 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The separation of church and state has forced American denominations to compete in a marketplace for souls/money, and they have become ruthlessly efficient corporatized entities, using marketing and business-process management, and exploiting tax advantages and high switching costs.

This is not a product of separation of church and state, but of the atrocious combination of hyper-capitalism and tax exemption for religious organizations.

[–] mightyfoolish 2 points 1 year ago

Such an interesting statement. I can kind of see what you mean. Would you happen to have more reading material on this topic? It would be very appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

lmao, so the church and state shouldn't be separated because the government is inefficient and its inefficiencies should remain to be inflicted upon the church?

that's... actually kinda based, lol. i do appreciate the objective and the unconventional method to achieve it. however, i think there's a difference between being a government entity and having control over governance. the latter should never be given to the church, because that's one hella fast way to surpass all the damage they have managed to do under the american system. for example, while your statements seem accurate for western europe and the nordics (emphasis on "seem", i don't live there) but over here in hungary the "christian democratic party" is literally the only party our government is in a coalition with, and they get to pass discriminatory laws basically as fast as they can come up with them. the closest analogy i can give is imagine if all the shit that's going on in those red states was going on country-wide with no one left to oppose it.

that's also what europe looked like before the "age of enlightenment", which is separation of church and state is so important in public consciousness, even if not technically implemented.

still, i do like your idea, and yes, inflicting bureaucracy upon the church would be helpful. maybe it's not a separation of church and state that we need, but protection of the state from the church's influence.

[–] afraid_of_zombies 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah it is one of the unexpected results. It is an imperfect analogy but Europe Christianity has become a domesticated animal that knows not to cause trouble. American Christianity is a mean badass sewer rat that not only fends for itself but can't be killed. I really doubt anyone could have predicted this before it happened.