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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Partisan politics and a church/state punch-up in Texas


Mar 12, 2010 15:07 EST

Ed Stoddard

Partisan politics and America’s culture wars have been on full display again in Austin at the Texas State Board of Education. According to a Friday report in The Dallas Morning News, Republicans on the board defeated a Democratic-backed proposal on Thursday to would have required that Texas students be taught the reason behind a prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights. You can see the report here by The Dallas Morning News which has done some fine stuff on this and related subjects.

The seven social conservatives on the panel were joined by three moderate Republicans in rejecting the proposal, which was backed by all five Democrats on the board.

Former U. S. president George W. Bush (C) speaks at a rededication of the National Archives in Washington, September 17, 2003/Larry Downing

The so-called “Establishment Clause” in the U.S. Bill of Rights — which states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — has become one of the many flashpoints in the country’s culture wars which outsiders often find bewildering. U.S. liberals and secular humanists have said this is the basis for America’s separation of church and state; for many religious conservatives, this is a dangerous fiction that has been advanced by activists judges. Battles over it have taken many shapes and have included those over school prayer.

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