What did the founding fathers really mean when they talked about the separation of church and state? \u00a0That’s the question sparking heated debate in Austin Texas, as the state Board of Education battles over what students should be taught about U.S. history, politics and government, and what should go into Texas textbooks. \u00a0The board is battling its way through a stack of amendments proposed by its’ 15 members. \u00a0Democratic board member Mavis B. Knight introduced an amendment regarding the separation of church and state, which was “intended to inform students that there is a political and legal doctrine out there that addresses the issue”, she said. \u00a0 Mavis wanted the information taught in the classroom “because I’m afraid the students won’t otherwise know about it”.<\/p>\n
Board members bandied it about for awhile. \u00a0Conservative board members pointed out that the separation of church and state is not written into the U.S. Constitution, so it’s important to figure out\u00a0“the actual words of the founding fathers… what did they really want and what did they say?” said Republican board member Ken Mercer. \u00a0“I think their point was that they did not want a separation from religion, they just wanted to avoid having a national denomination…one religion everyone would have to follow. \u00a0I think they had a different understanding of religious freedom.”<\/p>\n
The amendment was voted down by the board committee, but could be brought back up in discussion again. \u00a0Once the committee gets through all the proposed amendments, they will then be posted for public comment. \u00a0The full board of education is expected to make a final vote in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What did the founding fathers really mean when they talked about the separation of church and state? \u00a0That’s the question sparking heated debate in Austin Texas, as the state Board of Education battles over what students should be taught about U.S. history, politics and government, and what should go into Texas textbooks. \u00a0The board is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}