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Faith, Religious Organizations, and the First Amendment: A Study in the Relationship Between Church and State in America
No full textLiberal democratic theory demands respect for a basic set of human rights such as freedom of speech and religion, freedom from torture or unnecessary imprisonment-basically, these rights can be summed up as the right to participate uninhibited in an open public sphere, and the right to be free from unwarranted interference in the private sphere. Liberal democracy also requires that institutions preserve and reflect the equal liberty of citizens of the state and the rule of law. Liberalism is committed to impartiality among conceptions of the good and to providing each citizen with the liberty to pursue his own conception of the good, so long as that commitment does not interfere with the rights of others. Because of this commitment, a liberal democracy will allow the flourishing of a number of ideologically and axiologically distinct communities as part of a body politic.Faith, Religious Organizations,
and the First Amendment:
A Study in the Relationship Between
Church and State in America
Julia R. Parenteau
Gustavus Adolphus College
21 May2001
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Table of Contents
Chapter One: An Introduction to Religion and Politics .................................... 1
Chapter Two: Demographics of Faith in America Today ................................. 4
Chapter Three: An Overview of Various Faiths and Their
Effect on Individual Identity and Action .................................. 7
Christianity ..................................................................... 8
Judaism ........................................................................ 10
Islam........................................................................ 12
Hinduism and Buddhism ................................................... 13
Chapter Four: Social Control and Inequality in Relation to Religion .................. 16
Chapter Five: Religious Political Organizations:
The Activism of Faith ....................................................... 21
Chapter Six: Religious Political Organizations:
Who They Represent and How Effective They Are ............ ......... 26
Examples of American Religious Organizations ................... ..... 28
Chapter Seven: The First Amendment and the Separation
of Church and State ...................................................... ... 32
A Christian Nation? ......................................................... 34
The First Amendment.. ..................................................... 36
The Wall of Separation ...................................................... 37
The Law ....................................................................... 38
Chapter Eight: Conclusion- and Resolution? .............................................. 41
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1
Chapter One
An Introduction to Religion and Politics
Liberal democratic theory demands respect for a basic set of human rights such as
freedom of speech and religion, freedom from torture or unnecessary imprisonmentbasically,
these rights can be summed up as the right to participate uninhibited in an open
public sphere, and the right to be free from unwarranted interference in the private
sphere. Liberal democracy also requires that institutions preserve and reflect the equal
liberty of citizens of the state and the rule of law. Liberalism is committed to impartiality
among conceptions of the good and to providing each citizen with the liberty to pursue
his own conception of the good, so long as that commitment does not interfere with the
rights of others. Because of this commitment, a liberal democracy will allow the
flourishing of a number of ideologically and axiologically distinct communities as part of
a body politic.
Religion and religious involvement is a means for the acquisition of a sense of
spirituality. Religion, at least theologically speaking, embodies similar requirements as
liberal democratic theory: basic human rights, freedom from unnecessary pain and
suffering, kind treatment and tolerance of others, freedom to live and let live. Michael
and Julia Corbett define religion as "an integrated system of beliefs, lifestyles, ritual
activities, and institutions by which people give meaning to (or find meaning in) their
lives by orienting themselves to what they take to be holy, sacred, or of ultimate value"
(Corbett, 6).
Religion, ideally, embodies morality, purity, and faith. The basis for politics, on
the other hand, is often the acquisition of power. Robert Dahl defined politics in terms of
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human relationships that "involve to a significant extent, control, influence, power, or
authority" (Corbett, 7). Politics has also been defined as the allocation of values for a
society. People have varying definitions of values: family, wealth, power, equality,
freedom, etc. Politics is necessary because of this difference in values leads to conflict.
Therefore, values must be allocated. Compromises must be made, and cooperation is
necessary. Then, the allocation must be authoritative in order for people to accept the
compromises as legitimate (Corbett, 7).
2
Both religion and politics are concerned with power to some extent, and also with
the communication of values. Religions teach values, and because of that have some
degree of control over how people live their lives. Politics allocates values, and therefore
have some control over actions: what people can and cannot do (Corbett, 8).
Religious systems inevitably will have political implications. The two are
inseparable in the minds of members of a society; religious values and teachings are so
intrinsic in religious peoples' values and actions that they cannot be removed from one
another. In the United States, where freedom of religion is fervently advocated, there is
an obviously strong connection between religion and the government. Various
denominations of Christianity, which have been in practice in America since the earliest
days of settlement, maintain high levels of membership, and Eastern religions such as
Buddhism and Hinduism are rapidly gaining popularity. All of these organizations
impart different values and ideas upon their members. The creation of religio-political
organizations as a result is inescapable. Citizens' religious beliefs obviously play a part
in their political opinions and actions. Therefore, religious organizations have a great
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3
influence on politics and policy-making, as they are the voice of the religious concerns of
American citizens.
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Chapter Two
Demographics of Faith in America Today
4
Religion in the United States is flourishing and diverse (Fowler, Hertzke and
Olson, 28). The creation of the Freedom of Religion Clause in the United States
Constitution has made Americans vary outspoken and protective of their right to follow
and support a religion, especially one that may not necessarily be the majority belief
system. Spirituality is very important to American citizens. As a nation, America is far
more religious than its European counterparts. Approximately 94 percent of Americans
say they believe in God or some kind of universal spirit. In every aspect, Americans are
more religiously active than most Europeans: in their beliefs in God and Christ, bornagain
experiences, church attendance, and daily prayer. Also, Americans are more likely
to believe in the creationist account of human origin. 86 percent claim adherence to the
belief that God had a part in the creation of the world (Fowler et al, 29).
Faith is especially important to women and minorities. Two-thirds of women say
religion is very important to them, as compared to less than 50 percent of men. 82
percent of African-Americans declare strong ties to their religious beliefs, while only 55
percent of whites claim a similar level of devotion (Fowler et al, 29).
The most popular religion in America is Christianity ( or various denominations
thereof). With roots in Christian England, and the majority of early immigrants who
came from several Christian European countries, it is only natural that the majority of this
nation's citizens still hold on to those traditional beliefs. The second largest religion in
America is Judaism; many of the Jewish faith fled to this country to escape religious
persecution in their homelands. Recent decades have also seen a rise in the popularity of
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the Islamic religion, which is now the third largest non-Christian religion in America
(www.adherents.com).
Religious Populations in America: Self-Identification1
!lrs1,22s,000JI s62%j
;====
INomeligious II 13,116,000JI 7.5% I
;===== !Judaism
:I Agnostic
I Islam
!I 3, 137,0001
:=
I ===1:=8·'½:::l
vi
1
1 l,186.000 11 0.7%,
====;I
ii s21.oooil *0.5%i
* Islam, Buddhist, Hindu figures in table have been adjusted upwards by Kosmin to account for possible
undercount.
Largest Denominations in the United States: Self-Identification2
I Catholic 19.9%
IBapHst 12.9% i
lnt\i.,ran 11 • §% I
;==:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;
IJ'reshedan 11 2.5%\ I Jewish _] ::::I ===============2.===3
:::::
J i
1 National Survey of Religious Identification in 1990, conducted by the Graduate School of the City
University of New York, Jed by Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman.
2 Harris Poll, Self-Identification, 2000.
5
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As is shown in the above table, the five largest denominations of Christianity are
Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Non-Denominational, and Lutheran. Similarly, the five
largest religious bodies are the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the
United Methodist Church, the Church of God in Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 when it split
from the Northern Baptists because of the Northern anti-slavery platform. The SBC has
remained a conservative organization, and polls indicate its membership is declining.
6
The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 by a merger of the Methodist Church,
the Church of United Brethren in Christ, and the Evangelical Association. The Church of
God in Christ (COGIC) is a Pentecostal organization, and may be the largest black
denomination in the nation. The Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed in 1987 in
Columbus, Ohio, through a merger of three Lutheran organizations: the Association of
Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC), the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), and the
American Lutheran Church (ALC) (www.adherents.com).
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Chapter Three
An Overview of Various Faiths and Their Effect on
Individual Identity and Action
Religion and politics are obviously very influential factors in Americans' lives.
7
The role of politics is changes depending on the society: in America, it can be a means to
accomplishing collective goals of a society, or as is often the case, is a way to resolve
conflict (Corbett, 8). Religion, on the other hand, usually has a much more personal role
in human lives. Americans put considerable trust in their religious institutions, clergy
and organizations- often more so than most other private and public institutions. Clergy
consistently rank the highest among sets of social leaders in terms of public regard for
their ethics and honesty. Overall, there is more public confidence in organized religion
than in the Supreme Court, Congress, banks, public schools, television, organized labor,
and big business (Fowler et al, 30). Generally, religious convictions and practice are
related to personal happiness, physical health and general life stability. Often, deep
religious devotion correlates with longer life, quicker recovery from injuries, greater
happiness, fewer psychological disorders, and a lower risk of depression and suicide.
Religious people are more likely to get married, to express happiness in marriage, and to
have longer sex lives within marriage (Fowler et al, 32). More often, they contribute to
charities, vote, and become involved in the community. Religion provides moral
guidelines, reasons to follow those guidelines, and punishment for failure to do so. It
defines appropriate roles for different people in a society. Religion more often than not is
manifest as a social institution; people who associate in church or in church-sponsored
activities are likely to associate outside of church as well (www.psywww.com). Religion
has been a source of many of the world's greatest artistic and literary accomplishments.
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Religious insight and support helps foster social hannony, especially in times of social
change (www.aar-site.org). Since religion plays such a significant role in the shaping of
individual American lives, it is to be expected that people often define themselves by
their religious beliefs, and that those beliefs have an important role in framing their
political opinions and actions.
8
Because of the prominence and knowledge of Christianity in America (even if one
does not belong the faith) it will be easier to discuss the main non-Christian religions in
comparison to Christianity and Christian values and behavior.
Christianity
Basic Christian beliefs include the idea that Jesus Christ is the one true savior:
belief in Christ is the path to salvation and everlasting life, salvation from sin, death and
hell. They support an adherence to the Ten Commandments and the overall teachings of
the Bible. They believe in the concept of Original Sin, which states that each human is
born a sinner and must be baptized to gain forgiveness. Because of this idea, Christians
are often more strongly bound to the idea that regardless of their intent, they spend their
lives in sin, and must act in such a way so as to make up for this inevitable sin. As a
result, many more Christians participate in community service and welfare programs:
many of them see it as a means to salvation (www.innerexplorations.com).
It is nearly impossible to define how Christians as a whole feel about
contemporary political issues. Since their numbers are so great this country, their views
are as diverse as the society itself. Some Christians believe it is their obligation to
become involved in politics and try to change the society in order to uphold the basic
Christian tenets, and some believe that Christians have no place in politics, and that the
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two systems should be kept completely separate (Smith, 95). Traditional Christian
theology is patriarchal in origin, believing in a masculine god and a patriarchal hierarchy
in social organizations (family, church, etc.). Liberal Christians argue that such beliefs
are oppressive to females, and many liberal Christian women have been leaders in the
feminist movement. Traditional Christians have responded to the liberal accusation of
oppression by stating that the patriarchal nature of Christianity is not intended to be
oppressive to women; rather, they believe that men and women have distinct and separate
roles to play in society (www.patriarchywebsite.com).
Based on their views of gender equality, it may be easy to determine where
different types of Christians stand on relevant issues. Conservative Christians oppose
abortion vehemently, saying that humans are created in God's image, life is sacred, and
begins at conception- not to mention a general prohibition of murder. Liberal Christians,
on the other hand, are often Pro-Choice. The same goes for contraceptives. Christians are
generally in strong support of family values, and many believe that divorce tears families
apart and should be avoided at all costs. There are very few, however, that feel divorce
should be prohibited completely. Most Christians still hold the belief that the scriptures
prohibit homosexual actions, but there is a movement of gay and lesbian Christians that is
gaining strength in America (www.innerexplorations.com).
A common stereotype of Christians is that they are constantly trying to convert
non-believers to Christianity. In reality, Christian views on conversion are the same as
their general views on politics: it depends on who is being asked. Most Christians do not
feel a call to convert everyone to their faith. They support an environment where people
of different faiths can discuss, share, and debate their ideas. Of course, there are some
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Christians who believe it is their duty to convert others to what they understand to be the
True Religion (Smith, 99).
Although there are many liberal Christians, it has been shown that overall,
Christians are at least somewhat more conservative than average. With their concern for
family values, many Christians find that conservative political outlooks are more in line
with their faith than liberal views.
Judaism
Judaism, unlike Christianity, has no strict dogmas or formal set of beliefs to
which its members must adhere. Judaism is largely concerned with the actions of its
followers, and with their relationships: between God and man, God and Jews, between
the Jewish Nation and the land of Israel, and between humans themselves. Judaism does
not believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior (www.jewfag.org). Different movements
have emerged from varying interpretations of the obligations formed by those
relationships. In America today, there are three main movements: Reform, Conservative,
and Orthodoxy (Fowler et al, 49). Orthodox Jews take a literal interpretation of the
Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and believe that it applies to Jews, but not those
who are of different faiths. Reform Jews do not believe the Torah was written by God,
and do not necessarily follow the commandments unwaveringly, but do still retain the
values and ethics of Judaism. Conservative Judaism was created as a compromise
between Orthodox and Reform beliefs. Conservative Jews believe the ideas in the Torah
were from God, but were transmitted by humans (www.jewfag.org).
There is no call to conversion in Judaism- actually, rabbis have three criteria with
which they are supposed to try to dissuade those who desire to convert to Judaism.
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Overall, Jews have a very tolerant view on people of other faiths, as long as they adhere
to what they call the "Seven Laws of Noah," which are: 1) to establish courts of justice,
2) to not commit blasphemy, 3) not to commit idolatry, 4) not to commit incest and
adultery, 5) not to commit bloodshed, 6) not to commit robbery, 7) not to eat flesh cut
from a living animal. Jews feel that as long as non-Jews embrace these basic moral
principles, they are of equal standing (www.jewfag.org).
It is widely believed that Jewish women are delegated to a low social standing.
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However, the traditional Jewish view on gender is one that is "separate but equal."
Unlike Christianity, Judaism does not have a patriarchal hierarchy, and God is not
necessarily seen as male or masculine. Rather, Jews believe in a god that embodies both
distinct masculine and feminine characteristics (www.jewfag.org). Traditional Judaism
states that women are given more intelligence and insight than men, and Jewish women
have been given the basic rights advocated in Western societies (including the right to
buy and sell property and make contracts) for centuries. Because of all of these
traditional beliefs in gender equality, many Jewish women have been at the forefront of
the feminist movement (Fowler et al, 49).
Correspondingly, Jewish doctrine states that human life begins at birth. Before
that event, there is "potential human life," which is valuable, but not sacred as is believed
in Christianity. Also, most Jews are in support of various forms of contraceptives.
Divorce is acceptable, and in traditional Jewish scripture, is acceptable on terms that most
people today would find extreme- the smallest incident between husband and wife may
result in the end of their union. Homosexuality is prohibited in Judaism- or at least,
acting on homosexual thoughts is forbidden (www.jewfag.org).
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Judaism does not have a concept comparable to Original Sin. This does not mean
they do not believe in the necessity of helping one another. In fact, the Jewish Nation has
a very communal structure. Jews feel they are responsible for one another, and should
support and assist each other whenever necessary (www.jewfag.org).
As has been shown above, Jews tend to be far more liberal in their political views
than their Christian counterparts. Only a small minority of Jews supports conservative
political opinions.
Islam
Islam was formed out of both Jewish and Christian foundations. The word
"Islam" means "the perfect peace that comes when one's life is surrendered to God." In
Islam, there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. The religious leader is
the political leader. Muslims believe in Muhammad as the Great Prophet or Messenger
of God, and that through him Islam was founded. They believe in only one God, and also
that life on Earth is only a test and preparation for the life to come. Muslims have strong
faith in prayer, and it is a requirement that purified prayer must be conducted five times a
day (www.religion-cults.com). The upper two-thirds of the Muslim population are
required to give 2 ½ percent of what they have to the church. There are Five Social
Teachings of Islam: the first is a fierce belief in brotherhood, and the assistance of all
other Muslims, including Muslim countries. The second is a belief in a great and
vengeful God- the idea of "eye-for-an-eye" is quite prominent in Islam. They also
advocate personal forgiveness and repentance for sins. The third applies to women:
traditional Muslim views are very patriarchal, declaring that the woman's place is in the
home. Family is very important, and women are the keepers of the family. There is strict
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Brexit as revelatory policy shock: what can we learn about international student mobility from changes in EU student mobility to the UK after Brexit?
No full textThe UK's exit from the European Union in January 2020, following a referendum in 2016, represented a significant potential rupture to EU student mobility to the UK. When the UK was an EU member, EU students were entitled to identical treatment to UK domestic students in higher education, able to finance undergraduate and master's fees through UK student loans (or pay no fees in Scotland) and access doctoral funding. After Brexit, EU students were treated like any other international student and liable for upfront and very high tuition fees. This policy shock has the potential to significantly disrupt full-degree EU student mobility to the UK. Using a comprehensive dataset of all EU full-degree enrolments in UK higher education, 2007 – 2023, we investigate patterns of incoming EU student mobility to the UK before and after Brexit. We find the sharp disjuncture to have both overall and more particular effects. Looking at how the shock of Brexit plays out differently across sending countries, levels and fields of study and institutional destinations provides interesting revelations about how international student mobility operates
Transform(AI)ng Radiology with CheXSBT: Integrating Dual-Attention Swin Transformer with BERT for Seamless Chest X-Ray Report Generation
No full textRadiology reports are crucial for diagnosing diseases, yet generation them is time-consuming, places a significant workload on medical professionals, and is subject to inter-expert variability, as different radiologists may interpret the same X-ray differently. This paper presents a novel hybrid AI model called CheXSBT, which combines our custom-designed Dual-Attention Swin Transformer (DAST) for vision processing with BERT for natural language understanding to automate the generation of chest X-ray (CXR) reports. Leveraging the MIMIC-CXR dataset, which includes over 370,000 X-ray images and their corresponding reports, CheXSBT learns to interpret chest X-ray images and convert them into structured, meaningful text. Our study focuses on two main objectives: (1) automating report generation to accelerate the diagnostic process and (2) improving model interpretability to foster trust among radiologists. The approach involves preprocessing chest X-ray images and their corresponding text reports using the pre-trained BLIP processor, training the novel hybrid vision-language model on paired data, and fine-tuning it for clinical relevance and coherence. The performance of CheXSBT is rigorously evaluated using established metrics such as BLEU, ROUGE, and METEOR, achieving scores of 0.232 for BLEU-4 and 0.392 for ROUGE-L, outperforming other state-of-the-art models and ensuring high-quality report generation. By reducing radiologists’ workload and providing quick, accurate information, CheXSBT aims to transform the intersection between AI and clinical practice, making radiology reporting more efficient, consistent, and accessible
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No full textSecondary electron hyperspectral imaging (SEHI) is an emerging technique that allows experimental investigation of the chemical properties of material surfaces at the nanoscale. Despite advancements in automated image registration, registering SEHI images across different spatial scales remains a challenging task and it is still typically performed manually in practice. Many image registration approaches primarily focus on spatial features and they do not capture the rich spectral information in SEHI, often leading to inadequate registration. To fill in this gap, we propose a multi-scale spatio-spectral approach based on the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) to automate SEHI image registration. The main novelty of this work lies in the proposed multi-scale SIFT spatio-spectral descriptors that effectively integrate both SIFT spatial descriptor and differentiate the spectral signal profile as a function of electron energy. A new spatio-spectral descriptor matching algorithm is designed, achieving accurate image registration, with an accuracy error of less than 0.44 pixels. Results over real SEHI datasets how that the proposed approach performs better than other state of-the-art registration methods. Two performance metrics are used for evaluation, including normalized cross correlation (NCC) for examining spatial alignment and cosine similarity regarding spectral alignment. The results show that our proposed approach achieves good accuracy, with an NCC of above 82%, and a cosine similarity of over 93%. This work offers a promising solution for automated multi-scale image registration, which is an essential step for SEHI analysis tasks for material surface chemical composition and accelerating materials discovery
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