Word: sectarianã
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...presidential candidate James G. Blaine led the charge for a constitutional amendment. While it failed narrowly on the federal level, 37 states enacted what are now known as Blaine Amendments, spare clauses which ban any monetary or land appropriation by any government entity to institutions deemed “sectarian??—a term then used by the Know Nothings as a code word for Catholics. While a new meaning, which is applied broadly to all religious schools, has supplanted the historical one, herein lies the connection between the Catholics of the 1800s and their socioeconomic successors...
Although the banner of secularism is different from the anti-Catholic cry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the church-state separationists of today share a battle cry with the Know Nothings against “pervasively sectarian?? (in the language of at least a few Blaine amendments) institutions. Although the Supreme Court, in a 2000 ruling (Mitchell v. Helms), has found that the term has “a shameful pedigree” within American history, the Blaine language’s usage today—to block judicially and on a state level...
...compassionate conservatives,” including our current president. It is “employed to suggest that certain worthy organizations have been prevented from receiving government funding solely by virtue of their religious affiliation”—even though only “pervasively sectarian?? organizations are denied aid, not all “religiously affiliated” charities. Didion suggests that these terms are a smokescreen designed to hide from the American people a truth they “do not deserve” to handle...
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