If the Quakers were to win: As a non-religious person, I have a deep and abiding belief that I should not pay the extra share of taxes heaped upon me by a religious organization selectively opting-out of taxes. Therefore, I am opting out of that increased share of taxes, for freedom-of-(non)-religion reasons.
(Yes I know that was reductio ad absurdum. Besides, the US government is just fine with trampling on the rights of people with lady-bits, but $DEITY help you if you don’t fund its bullets. And it only means $DEITY in the most First-Amendment-compatible way, of course.)
I’m also a non-religious person, and I don’t support the war machine (while I do support those who go to fight and our veterans, my father was in the military and I have friends who’ve fought). So, the idea that only those who oppose war due to religion should be granted an exclusion while I would not is more than a bit distasteful to me. A law written that way would not only increase my taxes, but also further seek to exclude me as a non-religious person from having equal rights in America.
The UN, when dealing with the concept of conscientious objection, dealt with concept gracefully. In their words, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” So the UN did not tie personal belief to religion - yet here, in our supposedly secular country we still seek to tie law to religion.
Unfortunately, you can’t allow a business to have the same right that a person has - to just change its mind. Businesses have to plan, and they have people working for them who rely on that advance planning. You can’t write a law that would allow a corporation to suddenly decide they oppose war when the military budget is increased, and they want to reduce their taxes. You also can’t let every business claim they oppose war - many of them profit from it.
I don’t think there is a constructive way to “allow partial freedoms” for people desiring religious exclusions in their businesses. I also firmly believe the SCOTUS decision was an error - for reasons I’ve already numbered on earlier threads.
Quakers, at least some of them, have been willing to deposit their tax dollars into a bank account, and not protest when the IRS takes it. That’s not much of a burden.
Don’t think of the Religious Society of Friends as a religious society of friends. Think, instead, of it as a certification body, that says “I join with a centuries-long lineage of people who are willing to pay a price to avoid supporting war.” You should feel free to join that society and gain that certification. It’s not like Quakers actually require you to believe anything.
Why does religious faith enjoy special status? Faith = opinion, the last time I checked.
And these generic faiths are off-the rack philosophies held by the unquestioning; opinions which are surely worth less than the far more precisely tailored views held by folks with an interest in reality.
‘Religious faith’ is worth nothing next to the deeply-held and eminently defensible convictions of somebody’s life stance.
But hey, I guess it’s only natural for blind idiocy to trump considered deliberation when the context is the collapse of a decadent civilisation…
Please tell us what stripe of Christianity you believe in, so we can all trash it the way you feel free to trash the Quakers. It’ll be fun for us, and I know many of us could use the diversion.
Thanks, but I’ve been to more than 10 meetings myself and some of my closest friends are Quakers. It’s possible to avoid the topic of Christianity, but it’s still a presence there.
There are atheist Quakers, there are Jewish Quakers, for all I know, there are Muslim Quakers, too. So how is this a Christian religion? It’s more post-Christian (and there are Quaker scholars who make that claim; it’s not just me). The most consistent belief, at least among unprogrammed Quakers, is a worship of Gaia. But even that’s not consistent.
“Some of my best Friends are Jews” is actually the punchline to a joke.
I have never seen an official description of the faith and practices of any branch of Friends/Quakers which does not included the term “Christ-centered”. I’ve certainly met a number of Quakers who could be described as coming from a Christian background but are trying to figure out a way to maintain the good aspects of their faith without having to be openly quite so Christian as with other sects, but to say it’s not a Christian-based faith is not correct.
