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To: analog
I guess you think everyone hanging out here on FR is a happy little Christian, do you?

If only.

Read your history. Escaping from taxpayer supported state churches is part of the reason this country was founded.

Really? Then why did Massachusetts wait so long (until 1833!) to disestablish their official state church (the Congregational Church)? South Carolina's Constitution of 1778 established the "Christian Protestant religion" as the official the religion of the state and the Supreme Court never said a word about it. That's pretty odd behavior for a bunch of folks "escaping from taxpayer supported state churches", isn't it?

Read your Constitution. The Founders never said a word against States having official churches. The First Amendment only prohibits Congress from establishing a national church, not the several States, which is why these established official churches existed.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the "wall of separation" between Church and State has no Constitutional basis.

B-chan

9 posted on 06/26/2002 2:17:16 PM PDT by B-Chan
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To: B-Chan
The Founders never said a word against States having official churches.

"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;..."

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)

- Thomas Jefferson

15 posted on 06/26/2002 2:27:17 PM PDT by freeeee
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To: B-Chan
Read your Constitution. The Founders never said a word against States having official churches. The First Amendment only prohibits Congress from establishing a national church, not the several States, which is why these established official churches existed.

From William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States, 1825:

"The first amendment prohibits congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise of it. It would be difficult to conceive on what possible construction of the Constitution such a power could ever be claimed by congress. The time has long passed by when enlightened men in this country entertained the opinion that the general welfare of a nation could be promoted by religious intolerance, and under no other clause could a pretence for it be found.

"Individual states whose legislatures are not restrained by their own constitutions, have been occasionally found to make some distinctions; but when we advert to those parts of the Constitution of the United States, which so strongly enforce the equality of all our citizens, we may reasonably doubt whether the denial of the smallest civic right under this pretence can be reconciled to it.

"In most of the governments of Europe, some one religious system enjoys a preference, enforced with more or less severity, according to circumstances. Opinions and modes of worship differing from those which form the established religion, are sometimes expressly forbidden, sometimes punished, and in the mildest cases, only tolerated without patronage or encouragement. Thus a human government interposes between the Creator and his creature, intercepts the devotion of the latter, or condescends to permit it only under political regulations. From injustice so gross, and impiety so manifest, multitudes sought an asylum in America, and hence she ought to be the hospitable and benign receiver of every variety of religious opinion.

"It is true, that in her early provincial stage, the equality of those rights does not seem to have been universally admitted. Those who claimed religious freedom for themselves, did not immediately perceive that others were also entitled to it; but the history of the stern exclusion or reluctant admission of other sects in several of the provinces, would be an improper digression in this work. In tracing the annals of some of the provinces, it is pleasing to observe that in the very outset, their enlightened founders publicly recognised the perfect freedom of conscience. There was indeed sometimes an inconsistency, perhaps not adverted to in the occlusion of public offices to all but Christians, which was the case in Pennsylvania, but it was then of little practical importance. In the constitution adopted by that state in 1776, the same inconsistency, though expressed in language somewhat different, was retained, but in her present constitution, nothing abridges, nothing qualifies, nothing defeats, the full effect of the original declaration."

66 posted on 06/27/2002 1:06:35 PM PDT by Lurking Libertarian
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