"I believe that the freedom of religion clause covers the fact that a church must be allowed, but I believe the local canton should be able to determine where. Similarly inviting aura generating feries into a canton or asking them to reside elsewhere should be a local decision. Access is complicated- obviously the access to divine auras has been decided to be decided by whichever religion resides there, excepting when it spills out of the bounds of the place of worship, at which point there is no control. I also have plans for expanding and hopefully creating magical auras that I do not believe it would be appropriate for the rest of the council to interfere with. Obviously infernal auras, should any arise, wil need to be obliterated."
Atolycus is quick to interject. "Ah, but the sword of religious freedom has two edges my friend. You can't claim the right to practice your religion wherever you see fit, then seek to restrict when others do the same. So no, in my view, the right for all to practice their faith openly and without rapprochement prohibits you from controlling where churches and the like may or may not be placed. What you're asking us to do has the potential to open Pandora's Box if we're not careful." He stops and glances around at the assembled Magi. "However I'm but one voice and I'd like our fellow's thoughts on the matter."
"I think the best option for controlling where churches show up is by gifting the resources to build the church. Or just conjure one, if the religious group is okay with that. I could work on that. They'll feel grateful and we'll keep the centers of worship were we want them." Artemis responds.
Meliai sighs "There are two differences, and the first is scale. I have insisted that everyone be free to openly practice their religion, not practice it anywhere. Obviously I cannot bar Christians from practicing throughout my canton, but keeping their divine auras away from faerie and magical auras is a different issue altogether. And I will mention that I plan on planning pagan temples s well- generally they tend to generate magic auras over centuries so I will want to plan that as well. Now individuals praying in their homes and the like to household gods of the Christian interloper I will not seek to control, but I never said this had to extend to the level of abandoning the right to pan where various buildings would be."
"I agree with your point Atolycus" replied Constantine "and I believe we should set our focus to the permanent and macro activities of those beliefs. Restricting the small day to day is part of the sword. "
"Regarding the control of Divine Auras," Magnus offers, "I think they both make fine points. I agree with Meliai that we should be able to restrict where churches are founded to help regulate the location of Divine Auras. We don't want them near our valuable Faerie and Magical Auras. But I also agree with Atolycus that rules should be symmetrical throughout the faiths and throughout the cantons. If we're truly to practice religious freedom, no one faith should be treated differently than any other. I understand that only the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths create Divine Auras, while the pagan faiths don't. But I doubt that's a distinction that the common people will understand. They'll just see that one religion is being treated 'better' than another, which could lead to resentment. If we're truly to foster religious freedom, that sort of feeling is something we need to avoid."
"I'm also concerned with what Meliai said about this being an issue that she didn't think would be appropriate for the Council to interfere with. I strongly disagree with that sentiment. That's not how the cantons were intended to work. They're not individual nations; they're parts of the same country - New Atlantis. Different laws don't apply in York and Kent simply because the King of England has different dukes ruling those duchies. So it is in New Atlantis. The same laws should apply in the whole of the country. That means that what is law in Danusylvania is law in Atlantia and vice versa. Oh, there might be some local regulations that apply in each canton. But the important rules should apply across the cantons. Each of us may be the magister of our canton, able to do largely as we will. But that doesn't mean that we're no longer part of the greater country of New Atlantis."
"The Council of Magisters is the ruling body of New Atlantis. It has supreme power over everything, just as a king would. There should be no subjects that are off-limits to the Council. The Council should have a right to regulate anything it deems important to the governing of this nation, including, perhaps especially, Auras."
"I won't pretend to know much about Auras or quite frankly even care, however I do recognize that it is an area of great concern to many, so I'll gladly defer to you all. However I'm glad to hear that we're seemingly in agreement. We can't claim to be undertaking this great experiment, in part for religious freedom, then seek to curtail it the first time it proves problematic. I think Artemis' solution is a good one. If we make churches a prominent part of very visible locale, it would deter them from being created elsewhere, somewhere where the aura potentially generated might prove problematic."
"And Magnus is correct. The cantons exist as a part of a greater whole, it is still subject to the rulings of this council. However, yes, I am in favor of limiting the scope of this councils influence over a canton to those matters that affect us a whole. Religion and Auras happen to be one of those things."
((OOC: Basically for our US folks, the cantons are like states, still subject to federal law, but free to make their own, provided they don't interfere with said federal laws.))
Keep in mind that in the US, certain rights are literally reserved for the states, which the Federal government is prohibited from interfering with (10th amendment)
True, but that was a compromise because the states already existed and they were giving up some of their sovereignty to join the United States. We're starting a new country from scratch. There is no existing sovereignty to protect in the cantons.