Buddha on Church and State

In Bloomington, IN, the Dalai Lama is coming to town—to teach Buddhism for three days at a publicly funded university.  Not one liberal has protested his arrival.  Not one liberal has been offended by the statues of Buddha in the courthouse.  Neither does anyone seem bothered by the publication of Buddhist philosophy in the public funded magazine put out by the city.  ACLU lawyers are uncharacteristically silent.  The only people bothered by this church-state issue are the local Christians, who tried to put up a small display of their own and were shut down by the mayor’s office.  It seems that it might be ok to prefer one religion over the other—so long as the preferred religion is not Christian. This article shows just how difficult (impossible) it is to remain theologically neutral in a world which is inherently grounded in theology.