Barak Obama has recently made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as his own personal Savior and Lord. Here he is, the presumed candidate for Democratic Party for President of the United States. He represents a political party which aligns its policies on the relationship between faith and state with the ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union strives to separate church from state in every possible way. The ACLU, with largely positive support from Democratic office holders, has removed the Ten Commandments from the visible areas of state government buildings, has removed the Manger Scene from Christmas displays of city parks, has removed the expression of the personal religious faith of teachers to their public school students, and much, much more all in the name of the "wall of separation of church and state".
But, wait a moment. In the first paragraph the phrase used was "faith and state" and the second paragraph stressed the phrase "church and state". Are those two phrases used here interchangeably, or is there some message here? The answer is that, yes, there is a message in the different phrases.
A church, if the word is taken in a traditional definition, is an organization of Christians actively carrying out some religious activity associated with their beliefs. On the other hand, the word faith can be associated with any philisophy or religious belief. Everyone carries out their true beliefs, or actual faith every day. It is impossible to separate faith from any daily living activity, including those who are employed by a government organization. Thus, it would seem to be impossible to separate faith from state.
But, where can the line be drawn? When a Republican President or other office holder states that they are a Bible believing Christian who has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the ACLU simply puts that person on notice that they are watching their activities. However, it will be interesting to see one of two things develop from the statement of Barak Obama on his personal faith in Jesus Christ.
First, due to this statement of belief in Jesus Christ, will the ACLU pursue Barak Obama as they would members of the Republican Party? Or, will there be a qualification attached to Senator Obama's profession of Christian faith that differentiates it from the profession of others? That is, will there be a qualitative difference in the type of faith expressed between Senator Obama and others?
Specifically, Senator Obama has called for faith - based organizations to be included in the activities of government as it relates to the welfare of citizens. However, he has apparently also called for all such faith based organizations to observe the same non-discrimination policies that government agencies are obliged by law to observe. If this is to mean that homosexuals are to be allowed to participate in church related activities, then the moral standards of certain Jewish orthodox groups and certain Christian related groups as well as Islamic based groups would then be excluded unless they renounce certain articles of their faith.
If that were true, then in a certain sense, those organizations who did deny their own moral standards in this regard in order to be included in the governance of welfare would have had their faith separated from the state. In fact, they would have had a separation of faith from their own conscience. In such a case, even the ACLU might applaud the inclusion of such an organization in the activities of government.
