Word: religione
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...This struggle highlights a larger issue in church-state relations: how a government ought to define what constitutes a religion. Although a definition is a necessity, the government must act with the utmost caution, lest it violate the paramount separation of church and state...
...chief interpreter of law, the Supreme Court, has long struggled to create a working definition of religion that is both inclusive and effective at distinguishing secular from sacred. During the Vietnam War, for example, in U.S. v. Seeger, the Court approved “conscientious objector status” for people who held a “sincere and meaningful” belief which “occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief...
...definition provided by Congress is equally vague: In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress defines religion as “a belief [that] must be sincerely held, and within the believer’s own scheme of things religious.” It is easy to see how either of these legal definitions could apply to most of the 4,000 or more world religions. So where did the VA go wrong...
...Second, the VA requests a “concise written description of the main tenets” of the belief system, as well as “information about the structure” of the organization. The VA should be blind regarding the specific structure and tenets of a religion. As Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote in Lemon v. Kurtzman, “This kind of state inspection and evaluation of the religious content of a religious organization is fraught with the sort of entanglement that the Constitution forbids.” Rather, the VA should adopt a methodology...
...specifically excludes “social, cultural, ethnic, fraternal, trade, professional or military emblems.” This rule inadvertently discriminates against nonreligious people who do not expressly identify as atheist. There are many other identifying organizations and affiliations that may be equally important to a person besides his religion. The way in which a veteran is remembered should not be limited solely to his religion. Although there certainly may be cost constraints to the VA’s ability to provide any and every emblem requested, the VA’s current standard of permissible emblems demands significant revision...