The Crossed Pond

First part of this was written way back when.

So, the chaps at Cosmic Variance, as might be expected, have picked up on John McCain’s disappointing decision to join the happy throng of Intelligent Design appeasers. The offending statement was to the effect that ‘he believes “all points of view” should be available to students studying the origins of mankind’, which is basically what now turns out to be the Bush position.

We can presumably see this as a McCain play for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008, given that he’s bound to win re-election as Senator of AZ. Whether or not he’s going to make any dent in the evangelical element of the Republican Party is debateable, even with this and his anti-abortion stance, given various other problems that he has with them when faced with an out-and-out evangelical favourite (as was the case in 2000).

My question is as to whether or not the formal separation of Church and State, as a matter of constitutional law (or constitutional misinterpretation, as some have it) has in fact empowered the evangelicals in general. As long as Constitutional Law prevents something like prominent 10 Commandments displays in courthouses or creationism in Biology lessons, it’s pretty easy for politicians to court their votes by supporting these good old fashioned christian values, knowing that they’ll never happen. So perhaps some of the alarm that secularists feel at the assault on Church/State separation, the concern that the ‘wall of separation’ will crumble despite the constitutional protection is in fact a result of the constitutional protection. Might it be possible that, if some of these changes that the evangelicals long for were not so unlikely to happen, that reasoning politicians would fear courting their vote? On the other hand, perhaps the constitutional protection really is all that stands between us and the Holy American Empire.

Well, I wrote that before the 2006 elections. Here, now, in February 2007, it feels like a lull before a storm. Romney’s courting the social conservatives (although he surely seems doomed to fail), Brownback’s in for the nomination as the socon candidate, McCain is still trying to mend fences and Giuliani’s main effort must surely be to convince the socons that he’ll give them a bone if they hold their noses and vote for him. On the plus side, Frist’s disgraceful Schiavo performance wasn’t enough to endear him to anyone, including its intended audience, and he’s gone from the presidential race.

Back to the separation of Church and State, it is not certain to me that it achieves much; the UK, a country with a state church, is a more secular place than the US by a country mile. No one would seriously consider running on a religious political platform and the religion of candidates is rarely even mentioned. There are state-funded religious schools and, in general, those are in the highest demand not because of their religious values but because they are often the best schools (this is probably in large part due to the fact that those schools get some ability to filter which students they let in, however). Perhaps concerns about church-state separation are more about the people as a whole than they are about the rise of an establishment church.

All that said, like many others, I do fear what would happen if the First Amendment were kicked into the long grass. I’m just not sure whether I should.