Freethought San Marcos
The great municipal religious promotion of the 21st century
City councils have no jurisdiction over religion, yet throughout Texas and the rest of the country, they promote it, sometimes fervently. While city councils have no power to deal with religion, they love to use religion’s reflected glory to enhance their own status. When government officials meddle in religion, they lose all perspective and begin to see themselves as righteous and doers of God’s will, even in every zoning change they approve, every no-parking zone they create, and every pothole they order filled.
These council members reject Thomas Jefferson’s view that it is not in the “interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrine.” Ignoring this view, city councils are sponsoring prayer at the beginning of their meetings as though they have some ecclesiastical mandate to promote such religious exercise. They quarrel regularly with the author of the First amendment, James Madison, who stated, “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant violation.”
