Separation of Church and State

As some­one who does not believe in the divin­i­ty of Christ or in the Bible as the word of God, I am grate­ful for the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.

My grat­i­tude is top of mind late­ly as I read the con­ver­sa­tion in the com­ments of one of Rick­’s posts.

It is dif­fi­cult enough dis­cern­ing the mean­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion with­out hav­ing to also deter­mine the mean­ing of the Bible.

The con­ver­sa­tion linked to above con­cerns polyg­y­ny and whether the Chris­t­ian God approves or not. If you are a Chris­t­ian, I guess that means some­thing. But what it means depends on what kind of Chris­t­ian one is and how one reads the Bible. And, of course, every­one thinks they read it cor­rect­ly. But if one is not a Chris­t­ian, then what the Chris­t­ian God says has no more relevence than what Odin has to say.

Whether the coun­try should allow polyg­y­ny (or homo­sex­u­al mar­riage) is a pub­lic pol­i­cy ques­tion. A pub­lic pol­i­cy ques­tion should be decid­ed based on real world evi­dence of what is hap­pen­ing in the world today and what the con­sti­tu­tion says (and maybe chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion if nec­es­sary). The prin­ci­ple con­sid­er­a­tions should be whether some­one is being harmed or not, and whether a giv­en out­come enhances civ­il peace and pros­per­i­ty or dimin­ish­es it.