by Vernelle Nelson

Created on: May 27, 2008

When did this country stop being of, by and for the people? Separation of church and state is one of the founding principles of this country. Yet living up to this idea has been one of the most difficult things to accomplish because the waters are continuously muddied by those who use religion to control the minds and behaviors of the masses. Religious faith has devolved to nothing more than blatant mind control because religious leaders have allowed God to be put on the shelf for their own personal gain. Christians have been at the helm of this nation since its beginning. Jesus taught love, peace and forgiveness, yet very little of these attributes are evident in the politics of religion.

When it suited them, men pulled the bible out to refuse women the right to vote. Many believe the right to life movement, which is purported to have a religious base, is yet another method of controlling women by refusing them the right to decide what to do with their own bodies. Slave owners used the bible to justify that abomination and after slavery was abolished, it was again used to force thousands of freed blacks into a life of indentured servitude. Millions of indigenous Americans on both sides of the equator were obliterated in the name of God.

The Ten Commandments stand emblazoned on the doors of the United States Supreme Court, yet in a small southern town, a judge was ordered to remove them from his courtroom. Elected officials continue to take their oaths of office with one hand on the bible. Yet they proceed to inflict suffering upon the very people who elected them by allowing tax breaks to companies that abolish constituents' jobs while making billions of dollars on the backs of workers in foreign countries where wages and benefits are all but non-existent.

These same elected officials have made it impossible for unemployed Americans to look for work or for underemployed US citizens to get to work by allowing oil companies to continue to rake in tens of billions of dollars in profits while gas prices continue to set new records every day. It boggles the mind that the same elected officials who rally against women's rights also stand firm in their belief that funding for education, recreation, diversion and youth enrichment programs should be slashed in order to support the invasion of Iraq and prolong the separation of military parents from their spouses and children.

These politicians depend almost entirely on the knee-jerk reactions of well-intended churchgoers

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