Voter corners Fred on religion
Posted: Sunday, November 25, 2007 9:40 AM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy
WEEKEND THOMPSON CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOKLADSON, SC -- Continuing his courtship of second amendment voters,
Thompson visited the Land of the Sky Gun Show here Saturday morning, walking the aisles for almost an hour admiring merchandise and meeting customers. Several of the gun show’s attendees stopped to ask the candidate a question or two mostly concerning illegal immigration, gun rights and Thompson’s national security plans.
But Copper Welch of Monk’s Corner, S.C., was concerned about the increasing role of religion in politics. Cornering Thompson for four questions on his way out of the fair grounds, Welch -- an agnostic herself -- asked the presidential candidate about the church’s position in government.
“I believe in the separation of church and state,” Thompson said, drawing a distinction between church and religion. “I don’t think the church as a church ought to have a position in government… I didn’t say religion I said the church, so that’s a different -- that’s a different kind of thing. I mean our founding fathers -- I mean whether you’re talking about, you know, what’s written in the Supreme Court or the United States Senate or opening prayers or anything like that -- our founding fathers, of course, would never have separated religion totally.”
Welch then asked about the legality of prayer in government-sponsored institutions like Congress or public schools, to which Thompson replied that prayers is part of the “American way of life.”
“I think there ought to be prayer in both places," Congress and schools, Thompson said. “I don’t think that it ought to be forced on anybody, but I think if on an individual basis a class or a school wants to have it recommended, but no one else is forced to join into it then they ought to be allowed to do that…it’s historically a part of America, the American way of life, and I don’t think the courts ought to be messing with that.”
Afterward, Welch said that Thompson’s answers were pretty much what she expected to hear from a politician, and especially from someone who’s running for president.
“What he was saying was in effect contradictory,” Welch said. “He was saying he advocates separation of church and state, but then he also says that he’s very involved in religion himself and that he thinks that religion should be in the schools, prayer should be in the schools, which is religion, and it should be in government.
“I guess what I felt myself hearing was political rhetoric. Kind of a let’s please everyone [approach].”
Welch said she was concerned about the tendency she has been seeing for most candidates to advocate a closer relationship between “government and the church, and Christianity,” but she’s still deciding in her own mind whether that’s a good thing or not.
“The values definitely are good and [Thompson’s] advocating good Christian values,” Welch said. “But I have also spoken to children in school who are not Christian, and they feel very uncomfortable when there is a prayer, and it causes confusion between the kids and their parents versus the school and the kids.”
Although Welch had yet to decide which candidate she planned on supporting in South Carolina’s January primary, she said she would have no problem voting for a religious candidate for president, as long as “he keeps his specific religion out of government.”
