Article 25 says “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health.” Further, Article 26 says that all denominations can manage their own affairs in matters of religion."

Do Christians, Buddhist, Hindus, pantheists etc. have a right to interpret political events and speak from their spiritual perspective in political discussions, as long as they are not forcing people to believe as they do ?

The 4000 years of old testament history is full of God critiquing and guiding political action by mankind. The new testament is full of God’s kingdom critiquing and countering the practices of man’s kingdoms. 2000 years of world political history has been immensly influenced by the prophetic voices of Jesus’ followers.

Does the Constitition intend for spiritual/religious views to be excluded from all political discourse and action?

" Religion and the Constitution

Primary tabs

Because of their belief in a separation of church and state, the framers of the Constitution favored a neutral posture toward religion. The members of the Constitutional Convention, the group charged with authoring the Constitution, believed that the government should have no power to influence its citizens toward or away from a religion. The principle of separating church from state was integral to the framers’ understanding of religious freedom. They believed that any governmental intervention in the religious affairs of citizens would necessarily infringe on their religious freedom. Thus, the Constitution maintains a general silence on the subject save for two instances. The first instance, in Article VI, is a proscription of any religious tests as a requisite qualification for public service. The second instance is in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment contains two clauses that prescribe the government’s relationship with religion. In the first instance, the Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In the strictest reading, the Establishment Clause proscribes any adoption of an official religion by the federal government. More broadly, the phrase functions as a way of assuring that the federal government will not adopt any stance in favor of or against any religion. However, the Supreme Court has tolerated a certain degree of government involvement in religion. For instance, the Court has allowed government funding to go to private religious schools and prayers to begin certain legislative meetings, as in Town of Greece v. Galloway . In that case, the Court ruled that a town hall meeting that began with prayers, predominantly given by members of different denominations of Christianity, was not a violation of the Establishment Clause, in part because legislative prayers are for the legislators and not for the public.

The second clause of the First Amendment that deals with religion immediately follows the Establishment Clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof .” Where the first clause prohibits Congress from adopting any particular religion, the second clause prohibits Congress from interfering with an individual’s exercise of religion. This second clause is called the Free Exercise Clause. The Free Exercise Clause protects an individual’s right not only to believe what he or she would like but also to practice it. The clause protects individuals from laws that would expressly inhibit them from engaging in religious practices.

The Supreme Court has interpreted limits to the Free Exercise Clause and allowed the government to legislate against certain religious practices, such as bigamy and peyote use. In the last 30 years especially, the Court has generally adopted a more restrictive view of the protections of the Free Exercise Clause. Some commentators have suggested that the Free Exercise Clause is contradictory with the Establishment Clause because by protecting certain religious practices that the government would otherwise like to prohibit, the Constitution takes stance in favor of and not neutral to religion."
https://www.law.cornell.edu › wex
Religion and the Constitution | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information …

Is your gist that governments should be so atheistic as to stand in for the divine?

No, my gist is that the founders wanted to exclude governments from interfering in the public practice and expression of religious faith. The did not intend to exclude the individual’s practice and expression of religious faith within the political and public spheres.

Therefore, censoring legitimate faith speech from public expression is antithetical to the spirit of
the constitution.

My flying spaghetti monster disagrees with you.

2 Likes

Anyone’s quite entitled to disagree.

So what was the point of the separation of church and state?

So that the state does not force a religion on to you.

OR religion doesn’t force it’s way into the state.

Well, stick around for the next coupla years. The SC is definitely on track to make some rulings you like and overturn some decisions that you don’t.

1 Like