School choice in the United States
Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics
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School choice
- Thread starter Salty
- Start date
Here is the issue in a nutshell:
Baptists believe in the separation of church and state, primarily so those wielding government power will not dictate what people can publicly believe. No "You have to be a white male Christian to vote." The constitution says the government cannot establish a required form of belief, such as we all must be Calvinists, nor can the government hinder our free practice of Calvinism or whatever.
So the question is how do publicly funded schools, which means government funded schools, avoid teachings that infringe upon my belief system?
Say I believe God created life. But the public school teaches (indoctrinates?) students that life arose from happenstance
So the only constitutional way of government funding of schools, is to provide the money to the parents, and let them pick the school of their choice, such as a Christian school, or one teaching atheism.
Baptists believe in the separation of church and state, primarily so those wielding government power will not dictate what people can publicly believe. No "You have to be a white male Christian to vote." The constitution says the government cannot establish a required form of belief, such as we all must be Calvinists, nor can the government hinder our free practice of Calvinism or whatever.
So the question is how do publicly funded schools, which means government funded schools, avoid teachings that infringe upon my belief system?
Say I believe God created life. But the public school teaches (indoctrinates?) students that life arose from happenstance
So the only constitutional way of government funding of schools, is to provide the money to the parents, and let them pick the school of their choice, such as a Christian school, or one teaching atheism.
OLD SARGE
New Member
They won't or cannot as the concept of separation of church and state is that the state cannot infringe upon the church, but the church can influence the state. Indeed, it was a concern that the majority denomination was going to make it like England where you can worship outside of the Church of England, but you would still have to provide funds to the COE. Honestly, when they said freedom of religion the word religion was only applied to Christianity. They would have recognized anything else as pagan or heathen. They would have evangelized as they did to the Native Americans, but would have not seen them as having the same freedoms as Christian sects. This was to be a Christian nation and at times many places made you profess Christianity to run for office. Hence Congress printed Bibles and the Primer had the Bible throughout it.
In many European countries - citizens pay taxes for the church!
www.ncronline.org
Pew study finds continued support in Western Europe for paying church taxes
To Americans who drop coins into the collection plate, write a check or perhaps text in their Sunday donation, the idea that the state would charge an annual tax to support their church can seem strange.
