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To: GunRunner
I'm not sure. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the word God isn't anywhere in the Constitution, and that the two most important facets of the document pertaining to religion are 1) the government cannot make any law that establishes religion and 2)that everyone is free to exercise religion without state interference.

You're not using constitutional language in 1) above, but something that has come about by the "wall of separation" crowd. A more accurate summary of this in the light of the history of the Constitution would be: 1) Congress shall not through legislation favor a particular church or sect over others (because nothing higher than one of the signing states could have an official state church), 2) Nor can Congress through legislation prohibit the free exercise of a particular church or religious sect.

Here is how language was morphed to mean that if any level of government permits any religious activity or symbol it is "establishing religion." The relevant phrase in the First Amendment is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This specific language was loosened by changing "respecting" to mean "with respect to" and "an establishment of religion (ie, a religious organization)" to mean "the establishing of religion." From there, people said that whatever applied to Congress applied to the entire federal government and whatever applied to the federal government should apply to all state, county, and municipal governments and that the First Amendment wasn't talking about a specific religious establishment but anything of any religious nature whatsoever. This totalitarian approach to government was the exact opposite of what the Founders intended by creating, through the Constitution, a federal government that would operate only according to specific and enumerated powers, leaving everything else up to the individual states as they saw fit, and to the people.
62 posted on 03/28/2009 10:09:33 AM PDT by aruanan
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To: aruanan
You're not using constitutional language in 1) above, but something that has come about by the "wall of separation" crowd. A more accurate summary of this in the light of the history of the Constitution would be: 1) Congress shall not through legislation favor a particular church or sect over others (because nothing higher than one of the signing states could have an official state church), 2) Nor can Congress through legislation prohibit the free exercise of a particular church or religious sect.

The Bill of Rights is an enumeration of personal liberties. It doesn't refer to a particular church or sect, but to the individual. The government cannot force anyone to follow any particular religion, or prohibit free religious exercise.

The wall of separation as Jefferson envisioned it meant that the government and its leaders were not Constitutionally bound to answer to any religious authority, clergy, church, etc.

They also included the clause in Article VI about there being absolutely no religious test to hold office.

64 posted on 03/30/2009 5:56:10 PM PDT by GunRunner
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