I'll keep it simple. If a religion is so weak that it requires the power of the state to prop it up, what possible power could it have to save anyone?

I would say that about ANY theocracy, regardless of the state and/or the religion.

Leftwingcracker, this isn't about using the power of the state to "prop up" religion, but about ending the use of state power to hold religion down. The First Amendment's first clause, the religion clause, was originally written to ban the government from interfering with religion, but since the mid-1900s has been flipped on its head and used to drive religion out of the public square.

Bill, So glad you did this post. Can't wait to buy and read Mansfield's book when I get back to Tennessee soon! Good response to Leftwingcracker too. What has happened is a slippery misguided slope.

Bill,
What exactly do you mean by "hold religion down?" As a Jew, I know too well that for many people, anything short of allowing public schools to encourage converting people to evangelical Christianity is considered "driving religion out of the public square."

Government is supposed to be neutral on religion, neither promoting nor suppressing it. If private citizens or businesses want raise a thousand foot cross with a creche display for everybody to see, that is their right. It's certainly there for the whole public to see, including Jews like myself that reject the message portrayed. But when the government uses my tax dollars to advance a religion that I do not follow (or one that I do follow, such as in the case of heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois), then I have a right to cry foul. Religion is front and center in the "public square." Children here in East Tennessee where t-shirts with Bible quotes on them, churches are everywhere, billboards advance explicitly Christian messages...and yet I'm supposed to believe that religion is stamped out of the public square?