ANKARA — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned visit to Turkey got off to a rocky start on Wednesday when Ankara criticised his decision to raise the issue of religious freedom.
Washington’s top diplomat will be in Istanbul next Monday and Tuesday as part of a seven-nation tour that also takes him to France and parts of the Middle East.
The Istanbul leg is notable for an absence of scheduled meetings with any top Turkish officials.
His only planned talks are with Bartholomew I of Constantinople — the spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox world.
The State Department said Pompeo wanted to “discuss religious issues in Turkey and the region and to promote our strong stance on religious freedom around the world”.
The meeting with the patriarch will come four months after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan converted Istanbul’s emblematic Hagia Sophia monument into a mosque.
Pompeo publically criticised the conversion in July.
The Turkish foreign ministry called Pompeo’s chosen subject matter for the visit “completely irrelevant”.
“It would be more suitable for the US to first look in the mirror and show the requisite sensitivity towards human rights violations in the country such as racism, Islamophobia and hate crimes,” it said in the English-language statement.
Relations between Washington and its strategic NATO ally have run hot and cold during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Erdogan has cultivated close personal relations with Trump and been able to call him up directly to try to influence specific policy decisions.
But Ankara and Washington have also sparred over US support for a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkey views as a grave security threat.
Erdogan congratulated Joe Biden for his election victory on Tuesday — three full days after it was called by US media.
He followed that up by sending a separate message to Trump a few hours later expressing thanks for his “warm friendship” and saying he stood by his side “no matter how the official election result is certified”.
The Turkish foreign did not explain why none of its officials had planned meetings with Pompeo.
But it noted that its “reaction” to his visit “has been duly conveyed to the US side, together with our advice to focus instead primarily on increasing the cooperation between our countries regarding regional and global matters”.
The free movement of capital is a key long-standing objective of the European Union. It is one of the pillars of the Single Market, along with the free movement of people, goods and services. Despite the Commission’s efforts to achieve the ambitious goal of building a capital markets union (CMU), results are still to come, according to a report presented by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) today.
In an ideal world, I shouldn’t know a politician’s or Supreme Court justice’s religious beliefs.
I think religion should be a private matter that isn’t used to garner support from voters and other people.
I especially don’t think taxpayer dollars should be allocated to churches.
Churches have seen an increase in federal funds
According to NPR, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said President Trump and Vice President Pence “made sure” churches would be included in the Small Business Administration (SBA) providing economic relief.
Under the Trump administration, the federal government has already been providing funds directly to churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious organizations, according to NPR.
In 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency changed its rules to make houses of worship eligible for disaster aid.
The new SBA program significantly increased federal funding of religious institutions.
Under the new Paycheck Protection Program, businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including faith-based organizations, are eligible to receive loans of up to $10 million, with at least 75% of the money going to cover payroll costs.
The loans are largely forgivable, so churches and other houses of worship don’t have to worry about paying all the money back.
Bankruptcy exceptions
According to Associated Press, four dioceses sued the federal government to receive loans, even though they had entered bankruptcy proceedings due to the mounting number of clergy sexual abuse claims.
The Small Business Administration rules prohibit loans to applicants in bankruptcy.
However, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, a now-closed and notorious treatment center for predator priests, prevailed in court, receiving nearly $1 million.
On the U.S. territory of Guam, well over 200 clergy abuse lawsuits led the Archdiocese of Agana to seek bankruptcy protection, but they received at least $1.7 million.
Pandemic relief
According to Associated Press, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church’s haul of federal aid may have reached, or even exceeded, $3.5 billion, making them among the biggest winners in the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts.
So, while according to the Internal Revenue Service, “churches and religious organizations are generally exempt from income tax and receive other favorable treatment under the tax law,” they are receiving billions in taxpayer funds that they are largely not contributing to in the first place.
Meanwhile, many small businesses that do not have mounting numbers of sexual abuse cases and bankruptcy found themselves with a dire lack of aid, causing thousands of businesses across the country to close their doors either temporarily or permanently.
These bailouts were a gross misuse of emergency aid.
‘In God We Trust’
The phrase “In God We Trust” should absolutely not be the official motto of the U.S., nor should it be printed on our money.
In 1956, President Eisenhower (R) signed a law making “In God We Trust” the official U.S. motto. The law also mandated that the motto must be printed on all U.S. currency.
In an entry in The Society Pages, Lisa Wade, an author with a PhD in sociology, wrote that the political motivation behind the new official motto was not to appease Christian Americans, but to claim moral high ground over and demonize the Soviet Union.
Wade wrote, “Placing ‘In God We Trust’ on the U.S. dollar was a way to establish the United States as a Christian nation and differentiate them from their enemy.”
But, the U.S. is not a Christian nation. According to Pew Research Center, only 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade.
About 26% of Americans describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” up by 9% since 2009. This means about 85.3 million people in the U.S. do not affiliate with a religion.
Besides the decline of Christianity, a nation founded on valuing a secular government should not be endorsing a deity of any kind in its official national motto.
Instead, we should be using our original de facto motto, “E pluribus unum,” which is Latin for “out of many, one.” This motto was put on the Great Seal by the Founding Fathers. Or, come up with a new one altogether.
‘Under God…’
I also strongly believe the phrase “under God” should be taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance.
According to USHistory.org, the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a socialist minister named Francis Bellamy.
Originally, the pledge didn’t have “under God” in it. It wasn’t until 1954 that President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add “under God” to the pledge, an obvious violation of religious freedom.
While no one is forced to say the pledge, it doesn’t make sense for a part of it to be directly citing God, a deity many people in the U.S. don’t believe in.
On top of that, having God in the pledge directly infringes on the Bill of Rights.
In the very first amendment, the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Putting God in the pledge is prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
Public schooling
The unwilling indoctrination of children into a religion should not be taxpayer-funded, meaning prayer and religious religious rituals should definitely be kept out of public schools.
Children and their families can practice whatever they’d like in private schools and at home, but following a religion should not be part of what public schools teach.
Political campaigns and religion
Politicians should not make their religion one of their main campaign themes to encourage people to vote for them.
Instead, they should prove they are ethical through their policies and what they plan to do for the country.
Politicians can, of course, draw upon their religion for guidance, but gaining votes through claiming to be a part of a religion is an exploitation of people’s religions and beliefs.
Religious symbols on government property
In addition to these things, religious symbolism should not be displayed on government property.
With the exception of someone’s private office, any symbolism of religion on government property violates the first amendment.
If any religious symbolism is displayed, then symbolism from all other religions should be displayed as well. If this is not the case, then it is discriminatory.
What if it weren’t Judeo-Christianity?
If anyone objects to the principle of separation of church and state, I ask you, would you be okay with your tax money being funneled into a religion you are not a part of?
Your child being taught a religion that you don’t believe in public school?
How about religious symbolism from a religion you oppose on government property?
It is easy to turn a blind eye, or even support it, when a religion that is being funded by the government is a religion you’re a part of.
The church and state should not coincide with each other. Politicians shouldn’t be endorsing churches and vice versa.
Taxpayer money should absolutely not be given to any religious organization, and if the church expects bailouts then they need to start contributing taxes.
According to the Bill of Rights Institute, Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, writer of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the U.S., wrote in a letter to a Baptist Church:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
This upcoming spring semester will bring a new opportunity to Radford University’s students. The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies will be offering a newcourse for Radford students.
Religion 210, Islam in Global and Historical Contexts will be offered at Radford University starting in the spring semester and taught by Dr. Geoff Pollick.
The course will discuss the history and development of Islam around the world. It will highlight how Muslims practice Islam in the United States and how they express themselves in Iran, Indonesia, and Turkey through fashion.
The Islam in Global and Historical Contexts course will meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 4:00-4:50 p.m. Monday and Wednesday’s classes will be taught in person, and Friday’s class will be online.
The CRN to register for the class is 24207.
If students have questions about the upcoming course, they can email Dr. Geoff Pollick at [email protected].
The answer to this question at the heart of a classic work on political philosophyNEWS PROVIDED BY Carmel Communications Nov. 11, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 11, 2020 /Christian Newswire/ — The clash between religion and politics has been a way of life for centuries yet the history of such political thought has nearly been erased in modern times, leading to a lack of foundational knowledge of perennial issues affecting Americans today. In a republished version of a 1984 classic, THE POLITICS OF HEAVEN AND HELL: CHRISTIAN THEMES FROM CLASSICAL, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, questions of how religion and politics are intertwined and the reasons why this matters so deeply for humanity are explored and linked together not only in more modern eras but throughout the Old Testament and times of Aristotle and Plato.
THE POLITICS OF HEAVEN AND HELL is written by the late James V. Schall, S.J., a professor of political philosophy from 1977 to 2012 at Georgetown University, where he received his Ph.D. in Political Theory in 1960. Three times he was granted the Award for Faculty Excellence by the senior class at Georgetown’s College of Arts and Sciences. He wrote hundreds of essays and columns, and more than thirty books, including On Islam, The Order of Things, and Another Sort of Learning from Ignatius Press.
Robert Reilly, author of America on Trial, aptly notes in the foreword that man “politicizes everything” as he tries to reconcile the world to himself by his own efforts, which eventually leads to tyranny, perhaps a warning for modern day politics in the 21st century.
Schall wrote in THE POLITICS OF HEAVEN AND HELL that the best defense against tyranny is “the adequate description of the highest things, of what is beyond politics.” Both reason and revelation are needed for this work, and they are eloquently and ably set forth in the book.
“Schall’s book reminds us of the balanced riches of classical and medieval sources of Christian political thought,” said Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., research assistant professor, Busch School of Business, Catholic University of America. “Anyone interested in the survival of the West in the twenty-first century should read this book.”
For more information, to request a review copy or to schedule an interview with Robert Reilly, who wrote the foreword to the book, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or [email protected]) of Carmel Communications.
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