Welcome to "The
Liberty Insider."
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This is the program
bringing you discussion,
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views, news, and
general information
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all on religious
liberty events around the world
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and in the United
States as a particular.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the
program is Dr. Bert Beach
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Welcome, Dr. Beach. Yeah.
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You bring many, many decades
of religious liberty experience
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leading out in the world
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headquarters of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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for religious liberty.
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You're really a product of
the European system, aren't you?
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You spent much of
your formative years
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and your work life in Europe.
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I want to talk about structures
for religious liberty.
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In the United States
we spend a lot of time
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talking about the constitution
and the First amendment,
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separation of church and state.
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That is not the only model,
is it, around the world? No.
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There are, I
suppose, many models.
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In fact, you probably
could say theoretically
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that every
country has its own model.
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I mean, though it's
sometimes very similar
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to what is in another country.
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But I suppose you could say that
the 200 nations in the world,
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or whatever it is the figure.
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It's more than
over 200, I think,
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recognized by
the UN as countries.
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Each one would have a
little bit of a different model
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from the others
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even though some of the
models are very similar.
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When you say 200,
you're not including
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the south as a
separate nation, are you?
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You know, there's
a Russian sociologist
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or political scientist rather
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that's positive
that the United States
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was split into
three separate entities
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in the next 10, 20 years.
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But that's not happened here.
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But in Africa and
once in Latin America
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things were
separating at a great stake,
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you could hardly keep track.
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But as we said in
an earlier program
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or another
program, most every country
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even if they're very repressive,
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theoretically
grants religious freedom.
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No one that I've can remember
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is openly against
religious freedom,
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even in some of
the more repressive
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fundamental Islamic states.
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They still talk a good game.
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The only country that I know of,
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that right now
that I can think of,
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that officially declared no
religious liberty was Albania.
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The country write
in the constitution,
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"No religion in this country."
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If the children went to school
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they would be interrogated
sometimes by the teachers
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to find out whether their home-
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at the home the parents were
praying and stuff like that.
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This was under
communism. Under communism.
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Things have
changed a little now--
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Enver Hoxha, the
leader there before he fell
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and died and so on.
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And of course it's strange now,
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we have the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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in Albania and other churches.
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So it's a different situation.
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So most countries
have some statement
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in their
constitution guaranteeing
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some form of religious liberty,
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even though sometime it
just kind of giving lip service
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and in practice it doesn't work.
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Well, even in Saudi
Arabia, you know, they've got
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some generalized statement
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even though it's a capital
offence to change your faith
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from Islam to anything else.
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And even though recently,
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and I think we
discussed it on a program,
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the grand mufti in Saudi
Arabia went public and said
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that all the
Christian churches--
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and there are some expatriate
guest worker churches,
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that they should
all be destroyed.
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But yet, you know,
it's a benign statement,
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"Yes, we believe in religion."
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But in the United States
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it's separation
of church and state.
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And as Alexis de Tocqueville--
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remember that French
commentator-- De Tocqueville.
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Yeah, my pronunciation
is not French enough.
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But, you know,
he--he toured the US
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in the aftermath of
the French revolution
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and so he had these
sort of revolutionary views
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in mind still, but he looked at
the US as this new experiment.
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And he was quite impressed with
religious freedom in the US,
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remember that?
And he said that--
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already then most people said
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that the dynamic of religion
in the United States was
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because of this
separation of church and state.
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Well, let's put it this way,
separation of church and state
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if practiced in a truly
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separation-of-church-and-state
way is of course a good thing.
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You can have separation
of church in the constitution
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and still not
have religious freedom.
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And the most glaring example of
that would be the soviet union
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which said the
separation of church and state,
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and by that they meant
that the church is separated
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from the state and can do
nothing to control the state
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or telling the state what to do.
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But the state could
tell the church what to do.
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So separation of church,
it was really a separation
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of the church from the
state-- Well, of course--
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But not--but not the
state from the church.
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And of course in
the United States
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it's a two headed
religious liberty concern,
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separation of church and
state and then free exercise.
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You have to have
the free exercise,
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an unhindered
practice of your faith.
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Just to separate is a
structural thing but--
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And if you look at the
history of the old soviet union
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and look at the
French revolution
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and look at the American model--
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the French revolution
came about some of similar time
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as the American model,
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also kind of a form of
separation of church and state,
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but a hostile separation.
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The state was
hostile to the church.
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And they did not want the church
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to have
influence the on the state.
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So in France till today
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there's a very strong
separation of church and state.
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But it is a little bit hostile,
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not like it was at the
time of the French revolution,
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but a kind of a--
maybe you can say hostility
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but a kind of a-- Suspicion?
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Secularism, a secularism.
We have a secularism--
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Well, laicité is the
term there, isn't it?
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Laicité? Laicité and so forth.
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Now, in the soviet
union, it was as I indicated--
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and also a hostile separation.
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The Russian Orthodox
Church had been very--
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You know, I was
gonna bring that up.
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That was not by chance
in Russia or in France,
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they had had abusive
clerical systems-- Exactly.
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That had joined with
the power of the state
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and ground down the
peasants. Of course.
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The reaction of
separation of church and state
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in those countries was
because of the bad influence
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in a way of the
church over the years
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and its involvement in
the politics of the country
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and they didn't
want that anymore.
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You remember in Russian history,
I mean, in our late stage
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the name is pretty much a
hip-hop tune, but Rasputin.
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I mean, this
satanic, diabolical monk
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that had ingratiated
himself into the royal family.
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But that was typical of
the eastern orthodox priests
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in Russia whether the Tsar
like all the European monarchs
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claimed divine right to rule
then brought the church leader
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to implement through the
churches what he was saying
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and acting abusively.
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No wonder the peasants
rose up and killed the emperor
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or killed the Czar and chased
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the--many of the
church leaders away,
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and in France the same thing.
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Now, you have other
models that are--tha you find in
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let's say in Britain which
has no separation of church and
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state and yet there is
religious liberty in Briton.
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Churches can practice,
the Protestant churches,
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the Methodist
Church, Baptist Church,
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Seventh-day Adventist
Church are free to act.
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But the
Anglican Church in Briton
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has kind of a state status.
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And the Archbishop of Canterbury
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and the bishops are appointed
by the Queen and so forth.
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And so it gives them a kind
of a better status in a way.
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Well, it's kept them alive.
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And kept them alive too
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because you know
interestingly enough in Briton
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even though there is that
model of the state-church,
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the state-church is not financed
by the government in Briton.
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I thought there were government
levies in England to-- No, no.
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The government--
the state-church,
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it has lot of income
from its past properties
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and so forth and then of
course whatever the church
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can get from
offerings and all that.
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But the church is
not paid by the state.
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And that's one reason
why the cathedrals in Briton
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are having a very
hard time right now
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and there's a whole
effort like for example
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in Briton saying these
cathedrals are really monuments
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that belong in a
way to the state.
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They belong to the church-
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of course they
belong to the church.
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They are part of the church.
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There's the cathedral
or abbey and so forth.
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And--but they're not
financed by the state.
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So there are some
people that are saying
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that the state
should provide money
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for the maintenance
of these historical,
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architectural
marvels, that should--
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that would go to
pieces if they weren't upheld.
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Well, it's a seductive argument.
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But in England, even
though they have a state church,
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its establishment in that sense,
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I sometimes think that England
has become in its own way
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what the supreme
court in the United States
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have said characterizes
10 commandment monuments
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old ones on public grounds
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and so on the
pledge of allegiance,
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they call that ceremonial
deism which is religion,
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removed off its meaning
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and become sort of a
just a marker of society.
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Kind of a civic-- A
heritage, a heritage.
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And I think England is that way
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because I can't-- you
lived there for a long time
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but I, you know,
from all my visits
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and knowledge of England,
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I don't see much
practical evidence
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of the state
becoming very day-to-day
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involved in religious matters.
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It's just, you know,
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the over-lordship of the Queen--
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It's kind of a ritual...
--the head of the church.
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Ritual. A ritual situation.
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But religiously, but
the religious life is not--
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monitored by the state.
But kept the status when--
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when-- the Queen is
coronated and so on,
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the archbishop of
Canterbury plays a role
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and she appoints the
archbishop theoretically,
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even though it's actually a
commission that recommends--
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I think a
commission of about 20 people.
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And it recommends to the
prime minister two names.
00:11:00.45\00:11:04.12
And the prime minister
can accept any one of the two
00:11:04.15\00:11:07.10
or even refer and say,
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"I don't accept
any of these two.
00:11:08.58\00:11:10.26
Would you go back
to the drawing board
00:11:10.29\00:11:12.42
and see if you can come
up with some other names."
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So far it's never
happened, I think.
00:11:14.22\00:11:15.75
Prime minister accepts
one and then he gives that
00:11:15.78\00:11:18.55
one to the Queen and
the Queen nominates the one.
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I'm sure anyone that's
watched this program a little,
00:11:21.76\00:11:24.14
knows that I have a
great burden on Oliver Cromwell
00:11:24.17\00:11:26.71
in the civil war in England.
00:11:26.74\00:11:29.23
I believe, in its own way,
that wasn't just a civil war.
00:11:29.26\00:11:34.53
That was a religious shaking
off of the shackles of the past
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and they've never gone
back to the old models. Yeah.
00:11:37.92\00:11:40.87
And so in a certain de facto
way I think the day-to-day feel
00:11:40.90\00:11:45.98
in England is very much
separation of church and state
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even though they have
this ceremonial vestige
00:11:48.49\00:11:50.96
of the church,
you know, waving the--
00:11:50.99\00:11:52.57
Other churches
are free to proclaim,
00:11:52.60\00:11:56.03
to have their churches,
full liberty and so forth.
00:11:56.06\00:11:59.41
And of course we have
the Scandinavian model
00:11:59.44\00:12:01.80
over in Norway, Denmark, Sweden,
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and Nordic model including--
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Even though they
are mostly protestant
00:12:07.41\00:12:08.93
they've become very antagonistic
to establish church state--
00:12:08.96\00:12:11.01
Where the church
is united to the state
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even thought I
think it is now in Sweden
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they have actually
separated recently.
00:12:17.40\00:12:20.08
The church is
no longer a state--
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Yeah, Sweden, we've had some--
00:12:22.23\00:12:23.60
But Norway and Denmark
and I think Finland are still
00:12:23.63\00:12:28.36
to some extent united,
00:12:28.39\00:12:30.16
even though they're getting
more and more separation.
00:12:30.19\00:12:32.86
Well, those
Scandinavian countries
00:12:32.89\00:12:34.82
are becoming very secular
00:12:34.85\00:12:36.44
and there's an increasing
antagonism to church activity,
00:12:36.47\00:12:40.69
not just to establishment,
and that's its own problem.
00:12:40.72\00:12:43.64
But they're flying
apart at the speed of light.
00:12:43.67\00:12:46.41
It is a mixed bag around
the world, isn't it? Yeah.
00:12:46.44\00:12:48.99
There's no evidence
that we're moving toward
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a common model of
religious freedom.
00:12:51.13\00:12:54.52
And the United States system
I think has worked very well,
00:12:54.55\00:12:57.09
but it's not spreading.
00:12:57.12\00:12:58.49
I think well, I think
it's spreading in a way
00:12:58.52\00:13:02.54
that you find it
in constitutions now.
00:13:02.57\00:13:04.98
You find constitution--
like Italy recently--
00:13:05.01\00:13:08.10
Or even Australia.
00:13:08.13\00:13:09.50
Voted separation of
church and state which--
00:13:09.53\00:13:12.04
and that's really
influence of the United States
00:13:12.07\00:13:14.78
after World War II. Absolutely.
00:13:14.81\00:13:16.82
Well, we'll take
a break right now.
00:13:16.85\00:13:18.26
We'll be back in a few minutes
to continue this discussion
00:13:18.29\00:13:21.55
of models of religious
freedom around the world.
00:13:21.58\00:13:26.02