Issues of Church and State

As an addendum to my previous writing on the French banning overt religious paraphernalia from schools, I realized that the issue could also be characterized in the same way as the 10 Commandments in a courthouse. The latter is an explicit attempt to proselytize in a public space, but in a way, so is the former. The only difference is that one is promoting Christianity, whereas the other is promoting atheism or agnosticism.

When it comes to issues of church and state though, I find that there are middle grounds. For instance, I just came across a story about 'faith-based' prisons in the Christian Science Monitor today. I'm not all that happy with this particular program, run by Inner Change Freedom Initiative, because it only teaches from a Christian perspective and its benefits are unclear at best. However, I can't oppose faith-based programs in general for prisons because there is a chance, if properly instituted, that they could play a positive role in the lives of people who might otherwise be lost to society. That being said, it is important that these programs be focused for the benefit of the prisoners, not for the gain of a particular religious group looking for additional members.

Finally, and this is just an unrelated story that I wanted to mention, it's ironic that, given their people's history, Israel would be so into ensuring that foreign workers don't have relations with Israeli women. You'd think of all people that they would be a little more sensitive to issues of 'racial purity.'