{"id":41546,"date":"2025-06-02T10:37:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T14:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/?post_type=cs_article&#038;p=41546"},"modified":"2025-06-02T10:37:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T14:37:24","slug":"framing-the-church-state-separation-debate","status":"publish","type":"cs_article","link":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/the-latest\/church-and-state\/articles\/framing-the-church-state-separation-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Framing the church-state separation debate"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 20 years ago, I began to question my belief in the Judeo-Christian tradition that I had been taught as a child. I decided to explore the origins of those beliefs in search of what they really meant to me as an adult. I read many source materials regarding Christianity, including historical records and authors like Elaine Pagels. I also spent a summer reading the entire Bible, which was a slow and often tedious self-assignment. I came away from my explorations with a strong sense of discomfort with the reported actions, ideas and attitudes of both the Old Testament and New Testament God, and with the character called \u201cJesus,\u201d which led me to atheism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"cs_issue_tax":[264],"cs_article_type":[158],"class_list":["post-41546","cs_article","type-cs_article","status-publish","hentry","cs_issue_tax-june-2025-church-state-magazine","cs_article_type-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cs_article\/41546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cs_article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cs_article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cs_article\/41546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cs_issue_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cs_issue_tax?post=41546"},{"taxonomy":"cs_article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cs_article_type?post=41546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}