Some Minor Musings About The Potential Separation Of Church And State Resolution

I'll try to follow the NSDA's alphabetical ordering as I respond.

This first 2017-2018 post will, therefore, be about Resolved: A democracy ought to require the separation of church and state.

First, this resolution is obviously an effort to make me feel old. In January/February 2005, we debated Resolved: democracy is best served by strict separation of church and state.

As I recall there was some decent debate. Several intrepid young folk reminded opponents and judges that Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists sought to reassure the Baptists that the government would not intrude on their religious practices and that the phrase was never intended to keep folk from exercising their faith in the public square. There were arguments for and against creches in front of court houses and the 10 Commandments appearing in courtrooms. I don't recall hearing any debates about the Australia's tax exempt Jedi Knights, but the issue of churches' tax exempt status was rather prominent.

Since 2005 we have experienced the rise of the Islamic State and an increased fear of religiously inspired terrorism. Hobby Lobby has used religious freedom as a reason to argue that corporations ought not be forced to provide insurance that covers contraception. Further, the legalization of same-sex marriage along with several county clerks refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples and bakers refusing to cater same-sex weddings has created large public debates. In addition, Richard Dawkins angry defense of atheism was published in 2008, and Christopher Hitchens, a far superior wordsmith, published God Is Not Great in 2009. In short, there are plenty of old arguments that will be fun to listen to and more than a few new arguments to keep things from getting stale.

There are, however, some problems with the 2017 version of the resolution. Let's do the easy arguments first. There's the real  possibility that debaters will try to dodge important points with trite one-liners such as "The resolution is about church and state not mosque and state, so all arguments have to be limited to Christianity not Islam." (Feel free to insert temple for mosque, and Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism for Islam; the result will be the same.)

Further, this resolution is too vague. In the 2005 resolution, debaters would debate about whether democracy was "best served" by separation of church and state. The current iteration, however,  provides no reason for the separation, "strict" or otherwise. Issue debates and value debates may either fly past each other with no substantive clash or devolve into religion good vs religion bad generalities. Both situations make judge intervention far too likely.

I'll wait until I've finished my random musings on the resolutions to see if I recommend voting for this one. It has foreseeable pitfalls, but the potential for some good debates