Editor, The Beacon:

In a recent letter to the editor, the author cited a quotation from 4,000-year-old religious texts as having been delivered by God to Abraham to define land ownership by the Jewish people: “From the river to the sea, I give this land to thee.”  At the time, the territory was also occupied by eight other clans or tribes, the Canaanites, Kenites, and others.  And Abraham is considered to be the father and first prophet of three major world religions, Judaism and Islam, and ultimately Christianity.

Still, the implications of that single ancient sentence are central to the conflicts, news reports, debates, and geopolitics today.

In the 1770s, the Founding Fathers of the new United States had been well-schooled in the histories and horrors of centuries of religious wars across Europe and the Middle East, which consisted of more than a thousand years of Crusades, Holy Wars, Inquisitions, and violent reformations.  Hoping to avoid a repeat, America’s Founders chose to guarantee freedom with the very First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” – requiring the separation of religious dictates from the rights and laws of the citizens.

American citizens are free to study, choose, and practice their faith and spiritual beliefs from all those to be found around the world, while at the same time adhering to a cooperatively defined and just system of laws.  We should be perpetually thankful for the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers on this important partition.  Aside from some in the Confederacy who tried to apply biblical justifications during the Civil War, America otherwise has benefitted for 250 years from this fundamental separation – and we’ve enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, and the absence of all-out internal wars as a result.

Greg Heeter
DeLand