[thomaswest]

The SC has wisely recognized for more than 200 years that our Constitution is a secular document and we have a secular government. Neither Christianity nor any other religion is to have favored treatment.

The Constitution makes no reference to a deity or Christ--it says "We the people..." not anything about 'divine law'.

The notion that religion can be established by states is just nuts. Could Texas become an officially Baptist state or Connecticut an officially Catholic state? The idea is ludicrous. The right to freedom of religious conscience and governments on all levels that are neutral about religion is fundamental to Americanism, and cannot be decided by priests or preachers who manage to capture the power of government depending on which state you live it.

[Amendment10]

If constitution-twisting secularists think that they have the license to force Jefferson's "wall of separation" from a private letter into the establishment clause then they cannot complain if Christians find Jefferson's "Nature's God" and "Creator" from the Declaration of Independence in the 10th Amendment. Indeed, Jefferson noted that the Founding Fathers wrote the 1st and 10th Amendments in part to delegate government power to address religious issues uniquely to the state governments:

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people..." --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. http://tinyurl.com/oozoo

1st Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

[Old Student]

"The notion that religion can be established by states is just nuts. Could Texas become an officially Baptist state or Connecticut an officially Catholic state? The idea is ludicrous. The right to freedom of religious conscience and governments on all levels that are neutral about religion is fundamental to Americanism, and cannot be decided by priests or preachers who manage to capture the power of government depending on which state you live it."

You might want to go reread your early US history. Several states, including, IIRC, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Rhode Island, had established state churches supported by taxes. The way it is now is not the way it was, then.