Tightrope of Church and State
Separation of church and state is a concept held sacrosanct in the United States and elsewhere, though that separation defies easy definition. Where one person sees private belief encroaching on the public domain, another sees the government constraining personal religious liberties. The dividing line is blurred.
For those called to public service, that line can be especially difficult. For decades, South Korea has punished Jehovah’s Witnesses for refusing military duty as conscientious objectors. They were once beaten, sometimes tortured and even killed. Those days are over, but 600 to 700 are still sent to prison each year, usually for terms of 18 months.
“I was predestined to become a convict because I believed in the creator,” Kim Min-hwan told The Times.
Mr. Kim was released from prison two years ago, but says the stigma of being a conscientious objector has followed him. He has been unable to find a good job. Military duty itself is considered sacred in South Korea, and discussion of alternative public service has gone nowhere.
“This debate is a luxury we can’t afford as long as North Korea is there,” said Cho Myung-sik, a veteran.
The Constitutional Court is now considering appeals from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but in the meantime objectors continue to go to prison, or to leave South Korea for other countries. Those include the United States, where conflicts between church and state are also sometimes settled in a prison cell. An official in Kentucky spent five days in jail last month for refusing to fulfill her duty to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, which she objected to for religious reasons.
Matters don’t usually go that far in America these days, but religious-freedom boundaries are frequently tested, even on simpler matters. Some critics have been speaking out against a recent movement by many police agencies to add decals on their patrol cars with these four words: “In God We Trust.”
“The idea of aligning the police force with God is kind of scary,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, a co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, told The Times. “That’s the first thing you’d expect to see in a theocracy.”
But those four words happen to be the national motto, upheld in court. “If it’s on my money and it’s on the state flag, I can put it on a patrol car,” said Sheriff Johnny Moats of Polk County, Georgia.
He said those who disagreed had nothing to fear. “You could be a satanic devil worshiper, and as long as you’re a law-abiding citizen and you need help, we’re going to help you,” he said.
Yes, even satanic devil worshipers enter into the church-state divide.
A group called the Satanic Temple has taken some credit for the court- ordered removal of a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma Capitol. The Satanic Temple believes it influenced the decision with its plan to place a statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed occult deity, beside the monument.
The Temple’s co-founders are Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry. Those aren’t their real names, but it’s just as well: They aren’t real Satanists. “Mr. Greaves,” also called Douglas Mesner, sees Satanism as a symbol of the solidarity of outsiders, those who have been judged.
“I genuinely feel this is every bit a religion — this cultural identity, this narrative that contextualizes your life, your works, your goals,” he told The Times. “And you have these deeply held beliefs, that if they are violated, it compromises your very self.”
Which sounds not so different from a Jehovah’s Witness in Seoul.