[rwfromkansas]

"The real object of the [First] amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government." --- early Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Joseph Story

[lugsoul]

Funny, how you don't criticize Story for explicity ignoring the words of the Founders.

[WOSG]

Good quoe. The original intent was *NOT* to forbid any 'helping hand' by Govt to religious sentiments as it does its business (eg as done with non-demoninational prayers in schools, or with Army chaplain) but to forbid the *establishment* of an Official Religion. The Founders had 200 years of sectarian violence in Europe as their historical memory and they wanted to obvious avoid it. They also had the memory of pilgrims, quakers, Catholics, etc., coming to practise freely from placed that coerced a particular public belief.

We need to restore the understanding of the 1st Amendment awa from this anti-religious gobbledegook that the ACLU has forced down our throats and back to an understanding of true religious toleration and mutual *acceptance* of voluntary religious sentiment.