The Myth Behind "Separation of Church and State"

Liberty Counsel ^ | 2000 | Mathew D. Staver

[DJ MacWoW]

I see you are no patriot. The exclusion of religion from the cognizance of the civil magistrate is one the fundamental principles of a republican form of government.

It's a simple concept. The FEDERAL government was not to establish a national church or favor any specific christian sect( Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion). People were to be allowed public expressions of their faith (or prohibiting the free exercise thereof). It's simple language that has been distorted.

[Vision]

I'm not sure how he would win an real argument anywhere. The evidence it plain and simple. It's only been through legal and media "interpretation" that we are where we are.

[DJ MacWoW]

I'm not sure how he would win an real argument anywhere. The evidence it plain and simple. It's only been through legal and media "interpretation" that we are where we are.

He uses an obsure treaty and a letter by Jefferson as do all who'd like to muzzle christians. They don't trump history or the First Amendment but he'll keep trying. lol

[arasina]

Atheist n
A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others.
Chaz Bufe, The American Heretics Dictionary

[DJ MacWoW]

An atheist is actually someone that uses the government in order not to be made to feel uncomfortable.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"In 1947 the Supreme Court popularized Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state." (3) Taking the Jefferson metaphor..."

Glaring and amateurish mistake made by the author.

Jefferson was in fact quoting Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island:

To his credit, although Williams first called himself a Baptist, he later described himself as a "seeker," that is, a nondenominational Christian seeking spiritual truth, which is about as close to Unitarianism as one could come. And Roger Williams was the first to use the term later adopted by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptists: "wall of separation." Like Jefferson, Williams argued that such a separation benefited religion as well as government:

When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.[6]

Roger Williams died at Providence between 16 January and 16 April 1683, still believing that good walls make good neighbors. -- Source

To attribute the metaphor to Jefferson is incorrect.

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP

[arasina]

An atheist is actually someone that uses the government in order not to be made to feel uncomfortable.

True. :o)

I just like the AHD's definition since it reveals the true nature and how it's really all about human pride.

Good job, BTW.

[DJ MacWoW]

I see you are no patriot. The exclusion of religion from the cognizance of the civil magistrate is one the fundamental principles of a republican form of government.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel04.html

Christianizing the Delawares In this resolution, Congress makes public lands available to a group for religious purposes. Responding to a plea from Bishop John Ettwein (1721-1802), Congress voted that 10,000 acres on the Muskingum River in the present state of Ohio "be set apart and the property thereof be vested in the Moravian Brethren . . . or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity." The Delaware Indians were the intended beneficiaries of this Congressional resolution.

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Aitken's Bible Endorsed by Congress The war with Britain cut off the supply of Bibles to the United States with the result that on Sept. 11, 1777, Congress instructed its Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from "Scotland, Holland or elsewhere." On January 21, 1781, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken (1734-1802) petitioned Congress to officially sanction a publication of the Old and New Testament which he was preparing at his own expense. Congress "highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion . . . in this country, and . . . they recommend this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States." This resolution was a result of Aitken's successful accomplishment

Aitken's Bible Aitken published Congress's recommendation of September 1782 and related documents (Item 115) as an imprimatur on the two pages following his title page. Aitken's Bible, published under Congressional patronage, was the first English language Bible published on the North American continent.

[DJ MacWoW]

I just like the AHD's definition since it reveals the true nature and how it's really all about human pride.

LOL!!

[DJ MacWoW]

No. I don't play games. Make a point and we'll discuss it.

[DJ MacWoW]

What does the Christianizing of the Delawares have to do with the Separation of Church and State? It was not done by the U. S. Government.

It was backed by the US government as they gave the lands to be used for that purpose.

"Congress voted that 10,000 acres on the Muskingum River in the present state of Ohio "be set apart and the property thereof be vested in the Moravian Brethren . . . or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity.""

Did you miss the Bible being endorsed by Congress?

[vanillagenocide]

Section 1841. The remaining part of the clause declares, that "no religious test shall ever be required, as a "qualification to any office or public trust, under the "United States." This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test, or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretense of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in the history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew, that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of the civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility. The Catholic and the Protestant had alternately waged the most ferocious and unrelenting warfare on each other; and Protestantism itself, at the very moment, that it was proclaiming the right Of private judgment, prescribed boundaries to that right, beyond which if any one dared to pass, he must seal his rashness with the blood of martyrdom the history of the Parent country, too, could not fail to instruct them in the uses, and the abuses of religious tests. They there found the pains and penalties of non-conformity written in no equivocal language, and enforced with a stern and vindictive jealousy.

[Tailgunner Joe]

In the national government perhaps, but not in those of the various states.