LETTER: Power, or principle?

Recently, in an ad favoring Steve Bullock for governor, a professor attacked Greg Gianforte’s religion. A good number of us share Gianforte’s code of ethics, including belief in a divine creator and a young earth. Continuing archeological works and observable working models by scientists (some of whom began as evolutionists) have produced much evidence to support the truth of God’s word, and to make the theory of evolution doubtful.

The National Education Association has its own code of ethics, as we all know, which is anti-biblical. They believe the children need to know the truth, as we all do.

The original intent of this letter was to support school choice. Then I discovered in the Montana Constitution, Article X, Section 6, that “aid is prohibited to sectarian schools,” described as any institution controlled by church. Midway through section 7, one sentence is an eye opener: “No sectarian tenets shall be advocated in any public educational institution of the state.” The state teaches plenty of other sectarian tenets, as well as advocates anti-Christian behaviors. Does anyone wonder how it is that God’s word is so frightening to the NEA?

Notice how church and state appear so similar according to Constitution, and Webster definitions:

Sectarian: “A member of any religious sect. A person who is blindly and narrow-mindedly devoted to a sect.”

Tenet: “Opinion or belief.”

Religion: “Any system of belief, worship, conduct, involving a code of ethics, etc.”

Secularism: “Doctrines and practices that rejects any form of religious faith and worship. A belief that religious affairs should not enter into the affairs of the state.”

Concerning the First Amendment, in “Thomas Jefferson and the Myth of Separation,” Daniel Dreisbach wrote that Jefferson’s wall “wasn’t meant to bar religion from public life, but to prevent faith from being either politicized or tread upon by government.” (The expression, “a wall of separation between church and state” is found nowhere in the Constitution.)

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters,” Benjamin Franklin said.

Who do you think will inevitably have the last word? Man, or god? —Jean Smith, Bigfork