From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!tim Newsgroups: net.religion Title: Re: Anti-Bible essay contest (news item) Article-I.D.: unc.4765 Posted: Sun Mar 13 15:01:02 1983 Received: Mon Mar 14 02:05:33 1983 References: ihuxr.355 I heard just last week about Reagan declaring this "The Year of the Bible". Is anyone else out there as outraged by this as I am? I often get the feeling these days that the current administration (and many citizens) want this country to become a Judeo-Christian nation in the same sense that Israel is a Jewish nation, Iran a Shiite Moslem nation, etc. (They'd just as soon make it just a Christian nation, but anti-Semitism has been unfashionable in this country since WWII.) The right to freedom of religion is a tenuous one, and we have to fight for it. What has happened in many other countries could easily happen here. If not for Jefferson, we might well have an official state religion. Reagan in particular is uncommitted to freedom of religion; earlier this year, he said that we didn't have "freedom *from* religion, but freedom *of* religion". Bullshit! We have freedom from religion if we want it! The only interpretation of Reagan's statement that I can see is that everyone in America has to belong to some state-approved "real" religion -- I'm sure that wouldn't upset him. Gotta go, keys are getting too hot, Tim Maroney