Remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan society in his novel, The Scarlet Letter? Poor Hester Prynne violated the laws of the church, which meant that she broke society’s laws, too. At the beginning of the novel, the reader joins Hester as she leaves the safety of the town prison and makes her way back into the society that jailed her. Reading the book for the first time in the 11th grade, I had a hard time understanding how, in a free society, the religion of one group could also form its judicial system. That makes the laws of God the same thing as the laws of man. Separation of church and state was also an 11th grade U.S. history lesson, so we students figured no more Hesters could be jailed for breaking the laws of her religion . Or so we thought. We fought a war 250 years ago to separate the colonies from a king who was not only ruler of the government but leader of the church. A quick walk through British history shows what a mess that ideal leads to: remember Henry VIII
We all know the definition of slavery: dictionary.com defines it as the condition of being enslaved, held, or owned as human chattel or property. The 13th amendment to our constitution ended the practice in America in 1865. But the fourth definition of slavery on dictionary.com defines the practice as “severe toil; drudgery.” It’s that definition that we still stumble over as a nation. The drudgery of having to tell black children how to behave in certain situations. Toiling to explain why some skin colors open doors that others do not. The hard work of living in a country where some still don’t know that the civil war is over and the 13th Amendment exists. Ask Keenan Anderson who died after being tased by police in Los Angeles in 2023 or Henry Truman, who was shot to death by a policeman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1870. Ask why only 59 of the current 535 voting members of the U. S. Congress is black. Ask why only 10.7% of the 681 companies in a study by Crist|Kolder Associ