Carson Campaign falling apart

[JoeMo]

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion or impeding the free exercise of religion.  To me that simply means the government can't show preference to one religion over another.  It does not necessarily imply a totally agnostic secular government.  When public schools prohibit anything Christian; and then teach kids all about Islam and have them write Islamic prayers for "penmanship" classes, is that religious neutrality? No.

IMHO the government cannot ban nativity scenes at Christmas (I'm sorry - the "winter holiday") any more than they can ban jack-o-lanterns at Halloween, or menorahs for Hanukkah.

[Tom Wetmore]

The issue of nativity scenes is not whether the govern bans them or not.  It whether they can be specifically displayed on government/public property, such as courthouse lawn. Any one can display them on private property, on church property, etc.. In fact the 1st Amendment specifically prohibits the government from banning it on private or church property.

[D_Bishop]

Club Adventist!  I've been MIA, but this forum fills a void in my way of thinking like other forums can't.

Re: Ben Carson.  I've been critical of his campaign from the beginning.  He is not a lawyer and lawyers make the best politicians.  They know all the nuances of what and when to say this or that.  Dr Ben said a lot of quirky stuff.  A lot of it has to do with his adventist background and way of thinking. Some of it has to do with him.  

The Young Turks did a hatchet job on Dr Carson via youtube video.  It talked about how Carson believes that the USA will team up with some marxist group (catholics) and persecute sabbath keeping adventists and others.  It is not all that far fetched.  If you open up the reuters app it shows Obama and the Pope walking side by side.  The RCC has a history of promoting persecution.  it is not that far fetched at all.

[Gregory Matthews]

Establishment of a religion and preference for a religion:  What this means is that if government takes some action that seems to favor a religion it must also allow other religions to have the same.  

E.G.  The government in the military and in civilian institutions employs chaplains as I was in both the military and in the Department of Veterans Affairs'.  Once it began to employ Christian chaplains it became obligated to give Jewish Rabbis the same opportunity.  That has now been expanded to other religions and we now have Islamic chaplains and others.  The issue includes that of treating all fairly and alike.

The does not mean that the government cannot have standards as to whom they employ.  It does not have to accept just any person who asks to be a chaplain.   It means that the standards need to be the same for all.  E.G.  At one time  LDS clergy could not be military chaplains due to a failure to meet the standards.  Once the LDS denomination began sending clergy to the military that meet the standards, they were accepted and I have worked with several.  But, they were people who met the standards.

One of the standards for being a governmental chaplain is that there be an identified group of people who were of that faith and desired a chaplain.  It was that issue that caused the SDA denomination to begin allowing its clergy to become military chaplains.  In those early years a couple of senior Army chaplains, from the Pentagon formally met with representatives from the General Conference and pled with them to allow SDA clergy to become Army chaplains so that they might meet the needs of SDA personnel.

NOTE:  Some religious groups have as part of their beliefs a belief that their membership should be secret and unknown by people outside of that group.  Those groups do not have governmental chaplains as they do not meet the standards and do not want to do so.