[shibumi]

"I am always amused by people who quote "endowed by their Creator" from the DOI and then ignore other things Jefferson wrote about church and state."

And I am always amsed by people who assume that a man's flash of brilliance in one statement somehow sanctifies the whole body of his life's work.

By the way, the problem with the metaphor of "the wall" is that in the real world you can't stand on both sides of a wall at the same time. Do you think Jefferson was suggesting that legislators act either as hypocrites, or sufferers of Multiple Personality Disorder when attending to their duties as public servants?

[Locomotive Breath]

You got your history wrong. Badly. I called you on it. Unless you’re trying to say that Jefferson was a proto-Soviet.

You can’t pick and choose the Jefferson you want to use. You have to use the whole Jefferson. (Just like you can’t cherry pick the Bible. You have to reconcile the whole thing.)

Speaking of cherry picking the Bible. Go google “Jefferson Bible”. Old TJ pulled out the parts of the Bible he thought were valuable and threw away most of the stuff we would identify as “religious”, i.e., supernatural.

If you really want to get your Church knickers in a knot, go read “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine. Both Jefferson and Paine were attacked as atheists during their lifetimes and afterwards. The two thinkers and writers most responsible for providing the impetus for freeing the Colonies from the Church of England and the State of England were thought to be atheists. Funny thing that.