Letter: Harris wants to fix what’s not broken

Thursday, Sept. 7, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

Rep. Katherine Harris, Florida's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, recently made some remarks about how not electing Christians is "in essence" legislating sin, and that our secular laws are not what God intended. Ms. Harris' comments reflect the success of a campaign by religious fundamentalists to portray the United States as a religious nation, rather than a secular one. Such a portrayal ignores or falsifies important truths about the foundations of our country.

The United States was founded on secular principles, affirmed in the Constitution by forbidding a religious test as a qualification for office, reaffirmed and strengthened by the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment, re-emphasized and explained in wide-ranging correspondence among the Founders (most notably the letters of Thomas Jefferson), and reiterated in such internationally binding documents as the Treaty of Tripoli.

The Founders had the benefit of seeing in their day how entangling religion and government led to religious violence and warfare. They had the problem of bringing together a nation of widely varying religions, including some 15 state-level ones. They solved that problem by taking the government out of religious matters, and keeping religious influence out of government. The result has been both a prosperous nation, and a religious environment prospering to a degree unmatched in other Western cultures.

Conservatives carp constantly on how government involvement in things makes them inefficient and ineffective. Conservative evangelicals wanting the U.S. to be a Christian nation seem to be wishing this ineffectiveness on their religions.

Carl Kaun, Henderson