To the editor:

The gentleman who wrote on Monday concerning “state religion” certainly can’t mean that he wishes to make common cause with our present enemies, the Taliban; they are also very big on the idea of state religion.

I do not know what it is about the present time which turns so many people’s thinking dialectical (either/or). The framers of the Constitution put into the First Amendment both an establishment clause to preclude the kind of state religions which had caused centuries of war and oppression in Europe, and a free exercise clause to permit virtually any imaginable religious practice which is not clearly a threat to public safety. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think both nonetheless understood the crucial difference between holding a belief and imposing it upon others.

And the gentleman who wrote should also relax about humanism. The reason humanism has made what modest progress it has is that it is a force for peace. The peoples of the earth are divided by many things: race, language, culture and religion; they are united only in their humanity. Besides, secular humanism always retains the flavors of the local religious soils from which it springs, just as adults never really outgrow the lessons and dreams of childhood. Christmas will continue to be celebrated by millions, even by some who, sadly, have strayed from a belief in Santa Claus.

Dan V. Johnson,

Lawrence