2024 US Presidential Election

[SvennoJ]

sc94597 said:

SvennoJ said:

The First Amendment

The phrase "separation of church and state" is a paraphrase of the First Amendment.

It should go both ways, religion should not have influence on politics.

While I am sympathetic to the view that religion should not have influence on politics, the first amendment is pretty much just thin disestablishmentarian  and doesn't really reflect secularism in the Continental European/French sense of the word. Religion is relegated to the sphere of civil society by the first amendment. Secularism, in the French sense, also wanted to eliminate much of the civil society influence of religion too, but the first amendment doesn't go that far. 

A secularist (rather than thin disestablishmentarian) first amendment probably wouldn't have passed given that the nascent U.S was about to enter the Second Great Awakening. 

True. What we really need is an amendment to separate corporations from state :/