Un-Separate Church and State!

Yes, all this blather about the 'wall' between church & state is growing tiresome. Let us forget the lessons that the Founding Fathers knew so well and start down the road of government sponsorship of religion! Jeeez, those fundamentalists don't know what they are wishing for.

To stifle the thriving growth of religiosity in America (a condition which I regard with bemused regret), there is no more sure-fire way than to get the government involved in subsidizing it. Then we secularists can sit back and enjoy the ensuing melee as the various sects all fight with one another to get more money, to be the official sect, and to deny access to those few sects that 'everyone' agrees are not true religions, e.g., Pagans, Satanists, Hindus (idolaters), and perhaps Jews and Moslems! Then the meaning of state-sponsored religion will be apparent, but will it be too late?

Of course, it might get out of hand, so I wouldn't really want to go down that road. After all, we should all keep in mind the event that is the source for the eye-witness account recorded in the image at the top of this post, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, August 24, 1572. A real state-sponsored Christian on Christian pogrom in which the French king authorized the mass murder of French Protestants. When Church and State are joined, as an intelligent man said at a talk I heard recently, the king speaks with the authority of the universe, and the priest's words are backed by the power of the state. What recourse for the dissenting individual?

Some people these days are purveying the absurd myth that the Founding Fathers of the USA actually wanted to found a Christian state. I guess that depends on who you consider to be the Founders: the Puritans? They wanted a theocracy, to be sure, and were very eager to exile anyone from their midst who didn't toe the line, e.g. Roger Williams; Ben Franklin, TJ, Alex H. etc? They were the opposite, schooled in Deistic Enlightenment values. They may have been Christians, but they wanted a secular state. And from where did the most vigorous support for separation of Church & State come? From Virginia, home to many evangelical sects, all persecuted in England, and very clear on the dangers of having an official state religion. But time makes fools of us all...