[jwalsh07]

Lulu, I was gonna comment but I see you've been sutiably chastised, corrected and given a proper chance to trod the enlightened path.

I will add this. "Separation of church and state" is a phrase plucked out of aletter from a President to a Dnabury Baptist Minister by an anti-Catholic bigot by the name of Justice Hugo Black who enshrined it in the secular, lefty hall of fame in, I believe, 1947.

[Lokibob]

http://www.noapathy.org/tracts/mythofseparation.html

 

The statement about a wall of separation between church and state was made in a letter on January 1, 1802, by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.  The congregation heard a widespread rumor that the Congregationalists, another denomination, were to become the national religion.  This was very alarming to people who knew about religious persecution in England by the state established church.  Jefferson made it clear in his letter to the Danbury Congregation that the separation was to be that government would not establish a national religion or dictate to men how to worship God.  Jefferson's letter from which the phrase "separation of church and state" was taken affirmed first amendment rights.  Jefferson wrote:

I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.  (1)

The reason Jefferson choose the expression "separation of church and state" was because he was addressing a Baptist congregation; a denomination of which he was not a member.  Jefferson wanted to remove all fears that the state would make dictates to the church.