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Yesterday, a visitor to our lunch started in on the 'silliness' of the seperation of church and state, particularly of church and school. I restrained myself to /polite/ disagreement, because that is the peril of working in rural South Carolina.
However, here's my take on it in a more philosophical tone.
Government is largely a matter of imposition. It can control your body, tell you what to do, when to do it, and to punish you when you exhibit a behavior that is prohibited. However, government has no authority over the contents of your head. It can regulate what you /do/, not what you /are/. Nor can it truly assign moral import to laws; speeding is not a moral failing, it's just against the law. Those things which are illegal and also immoral usually get their immorality from an outside source (either secular ethics or religion, or philosophy).
Religion is largely a matter of morality. Without temporal authority, religion can not regulate what you DO, and has no ability to punish behavior. However, it assigns value judgements and morality to your thoughts and your beliefs, as well as to their outward expression (your behavior). Cursing your parents, even just in your head, can be a sin. However, you have to buy in to this; without legal authority, no religion can /compel/ your behavior to match with their prohibitions; it is an opt-in set of restrictions.
When these two authorities remain in their seperate spheres, it allows the maximum freedom for the individual, and the maximum opportunity for reform and oversight of each institution. Being able to acknowledge that laws can be immoral and are imposed by fallable men allows individuals to challenge those laws, or for that matter, to break certain laws without becoming 'bad' men and women in the eyes of the community. Civil disobedience and legal reform are the acknowledgement that a law is not morally right simply because it /is/ the law. Likewise, when a religion has no power to compel obedient behavior, it then must change with the mores of the community, or lose membership. Likewise, people who find (for whatever reason) that their thoughts do stray from the moral compass of the faith to the extent that they no longer believe in that faith...then they can leave.
However, when the two combine, then you now have a single institution which has the potential to compel physical /and/ emotion obedience, by making a sin against the soul to break the law; to make the law inherently moral. This not only imposes intolerable restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but it also carries a high risk of corrupting both the government /and/ the chosen religion. Civil disobedience and legal reform become difficult or impossible, as does questioning the heads of state. Religion no longer is as bound to listen to the changing mores of the culture, nor to tackle difficult theological questions to the satisfaction of the layman, and those whose hearts have moved away have restricted means to seek other faiths, which leads to hypocracy and cynicism within that faith.
In an involuntary school setting, such as public schools, you have an even larger problem, in that schools are entrusted with at least /trying/ to impart lessons of fact and citizenship into children who are compelled to be here, and compelled to regurgitate the answers we desire in order to gain qualifications for future employment. Children have even less recourse to challenge the system than adults, and are more susceptable to influence, particularly at the younger ages, thus, the bar must be even higher and the barrier from the imposition of our faith onto them more rigorously enforced. Not, as some would claim, to turn out god-hating atheists, or anything like that, but to ensure that families and individuals have the right to /claim/ their faith, not have it imposed upon them, and not have another faith interfering with their personal worship. There is, admittedly, an inherent conflict with those faiths which demand witnessing of their followers in every aspect of their lives, but only so far as said followers are reduced to witnessing by being /exemplars/ worthy of emulation, rather than by conversion attempts. And it imposes equal restrictions upon the actors of the state, in that we must strive to find justifications for our policies which stand up to debate and challenges, and cannot simply claim the higher moral ground (or, rather, we can always /try/, but anyone may reject that claim). This enables, among other things, private schools to flourish for families who wish to have their faith integrated with their education...but they make that choice, it is /not/ made for them.
That's why these things are important, even when they inconvenience individuals on all sides.
However, here's my take on it in a more philosophical tone.
Government is largely a matter of imposition. It can control your body, tell you what to do, when to do it, and to punish you when you exhibit a behavior that is prohibited. However, government has no authority over the contents of your head. It can regulate what you /do/, not what you /are/. Nor can it truly assign moral import to laws; speeding is not a moral failing, it's just against the law. Those things which are illegal and also immoral usually get their immorality from an outside source (either secular ethics or religion, or philosophy).
Religion is largely a matter of morality. Without temporal authority, religion can not regulate what you DO, and has no ability to punish behavior. However, it assigns value judgements and morality to your thoughts and your beliefs, as well as to their outward expression (your behavior). Cursing your parents, even just in your head, can be a sin. However, you have to buy in to this; without legal authority, no religion can /compel/ your behavior to match with their prohibitions; it is an opt-in set of restrictions.
When these two authorities remain in their seperate spheres, it allows the maximum freedom for the individual, and the maximum opportunity for reform and oversight of each institution. Being able to acknowledge that laws can be immoral and are imposed by fallable men allows individuals to challenge those laws, or for that matter, to break certain laws without becoming 'bad' men and women in the eyes of the community. Civil disobedience and legal reform are the acknowledgement that a law is not morally right simply because it /is/ the law. Likewise, when a religion has no power to compel obedient behavior, it then must change with the mores of the community, or lose membership. Likewise, people who find (for whatever reason) that their thoughts do stray from the moral compass of the faith to the extent that they no longer believe in that faith...then they can leave.
However, when the two combine, then you now have a single institution which has the potential to compel physical /and/ emotion obedience, by making a sin against the soul to break the law; to make the law inherently moral. This not only imposes intolerable restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but it also carries a high risk of corrupting both the government /and/ the chosen religion. Civil disobedience and legal reform become difficult or impossible, as does questioning the heads of state. Religion no longer is as bound to listen to the changing mores of the culture, nor to tackle difficult theological questions to the satisfaction of the layman, and those whose hearts have moved away have restricted means to seek other faiths, which leads to hypocracy and cynicism within that faith.
In an involuntary school setting, such as public schools, you have an even larger problem, in that schools are entrusted with at least /trying/ to impart lessons of fact and citizenship into children who are compelled to be here, and compelled to regurgitate the answers we desire in order to gain qualifications for future employment. Children have even less recourse to challenge the system than adults, and are more susceptable to influence, particularly at the younger ages, thus, the bar must be even higher and the barrier from the imposition of our faith onto them more rigorously enforced. Not, as some would claim, to turn out god-hating atheists, or anything like that, but to ensure that families and individuals have the right to /claim/ their faith, not have it imposed upon them, and not have another faith interfering with their personal worship. There is, admittedly, an inherent conflict with those faiths which demand witnessing of their followers in every aspect of their lives, but only so far as said followers are reduced to witnessing by being /exemplars/ worthy of emulation, rather than by conversion attempts. And it imposes equal restrictions upon the actors of the state, in that we must strive to find justifications for our policies which stand up to debate and challenges, and cannot simply claim the higher moral ground (or, rather, we can always /try/, but anyone may reject that claim). This enables, among other things, private schools to flourish for families who wish to have their faith integrated with their education...but they make that choice, it is /not/ made for them.
That's why these things are important, even when they inconvenience individuals on all sides.