Posted on 04/15/2005 4:56:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Source?
The context sort of changes a potload (that's a technical term) of judicial holdings. That is, it renders them WRONG. In error.
Shuffling off to find independent corroboration ...
You're forgetting that he was a member of government, and not a private citizen protected from government. The separation of church and state is not intended to protect the government, it's intended to protect people from individual abuses of power. He was seen to have abused power by citizens who successfully carried their case against him through the courts. Because he made false claims about the nature of our laws, I agree that he should have been censured.
What "separation of church and state" are you referring to? Where did you learn of this notion? It must be fairly new as I've not ever heard of it.
Read the link I posed to Alabama's constitution. Interpret it in plain English. Alabama excludes the preference for or support for a particular religion in any way by law.
Bump!
Jefferson also almost certainly did not, as some Christian-nation mythologists like David Barton have claimed, give a speech or write a letter asserting that the wall was intended to be only a one-way wall protecting churches from government but not vice versa. The alleged Jeffersonian words were "That wall is a one directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government." That purported wording is repeated by many Christian-nation mythmakers, but no evidence at all can be found for it, and it is wildly inconsistent with extensive writings known with certainty to be Jefferson's.Oops. Looks like the "one-directional wall" phrase is not Jefferson's. Not to worry though.http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/shb/buckner_18_1.html
Among more scholarly critics, Robert L. Cord, in his book, Separation of Church and State, calls the view of Justice Black--that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state" and that it "must be kept high and impregnable"--mere "lines of fiction." Moreover, a figure no less than the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William A. Rehnquist, holds similar views. For Rehnquist, Black's use of Jefferson's metaphor is a serious distortion of the true purpose of the Founding Fathers. The "wall" is, says Rehnquist, a "faulty" premise upon which Everson and a host of succeeding cases have been wrongly decided. In his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, a 1985 case which disallowed a moment of silence for "prayer or meditation" in Alabama's public schools, Rehnquist expressed his regret that the Establishment Clause had been "expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years." Rehnquist argued for a purpose in the religion clauses "far different" from the highly simplified "wall of separation between church and state." The purpose of the Establishment Clause, he argued, was more limited than what the Supreme Court had traditionally held:That second link is a well written article. I'm no student of history, and won'tvouch for its accuracy, but I did enjoy reading it.It forbade establishment of a national religion, and forbade preference among religious sects or denominations. . . . The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion nor did it prohibit the federal government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the "wall of separation" that was constitutionalized in Everson.
Rehnquist then concluded: "The `wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."
AFAIK, Moore was not accused of any improper application of state or federal law to a case in his courtroom.
preference for or support for a particular religion in any way by law.
Now show me where Roy Moore ever attempted, let alone wished, to pass a law making the Ten Commandments paramount to any other religious dogma.
No, but citizens did argue successfully that they did not feel that he could uphold the law impartially.
Not necessary. He's already been impeached, unanimously I might add, by his own state's judicial ethics commission.
There is no need to argue feelings. A person can assert they have certain feelings, and it --is-- so. But no case of Moore's was challenged (let alone beat) as being improperly decided due to his personal adherance to Judeo-Christian principles. In court, he applied the laws of the state and the laws of the country. It's all there in black and white.
Roy Moore will be the next Alabama Governor if he wants the job!!!
The Constitution forbids the government from interfering with religion. It does not restrict the religious from influencing government. Jefferson opposed such "religious tests" in politics.
The "one-directional" part of the quote is not authentic. And based on the articles cited, I think it also doesn't represent Jefferson's sentiments. He didn't want the government involved in running a church, and he didn't want an organized church running the government.
The Constitution forbids the government from interfering with religion. It does not restrict the religious from influencing government.
I'm sure he would agree with both of those. Many 1st amendment decsions, with a genesis at Everson, are based on a gross misconstruction.
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