"If that's your rationale, Jefferson's "wall of separation" is solid and binding."
Given that Jefferson had NOTHING TO DO with the text or ratification of the original Constitution or the Bill of Rights (he was in Paris as our Minister to France), I don't see how his correspondence would illuminate us in any way.
"Better, I think, to go with what the Constitution actually says. Nowhere does it invoke Biblical authority for anything."
I've already said that the text of the Constitution does not invoke Biblical authority. But neither does the text deny that our rights were endowed to us by God. Remember, it is the God-given nature of our rights that makes it illegitimate for any man to take them away from us. It is perversive to assume that the Founders believed that our rights came from Man or that the Bill of Rights *created* any rights rather than merely *declaring* them.
It is perversive to assume that the Founders believed that our rights came from Man or that the Bill of Rights *created* any rights rather than merely *declaring* them. I agree, but there is another source, natural rights as often mentioned by Jefferson, where it is an axiom that we have these rights by virtue of being human.