I do, however, take umbrage at your calling the Catholic Church a "corrupt church" - I do not agree. Certainly some of the men within Her were corrupt, that has been true since Judas. However, the Truth was the same in 33 AD, 1533 AD and now.
The founding fathers (assuming you mean the founding fathers of the USA), merely stressed "freedom of religion" for everyone, regardless of creed therefore, no established state church. They were still mindful of how our country was founded. And who was persecuting the Pilgrims? Not the Catholic Church.
Again, I apologize. I took the latter part of your post as a gratuitous slap at the Catholic Church.
Thank you for your gracious apology. My post was in no way intended to be a shot at the Catholic church. The Catholic church has a very rich tradition and it is indeed the mother of the Christian church. I was simply trying to explain some of the roots of the differences between the Catholic and Anglican churches as NYer and Siobhan had requested. I was not suggesting that all in the church were corrupt. The truth is that there were many schisms within the church itself, often originating with clerics and monastics within the church who saw the corruption that was prevalent at various times in history. This is not widely disputed even within the Catholic church itself.
Yes, I did mean the founding fathers of the U.S. And granted, there was a lot of interdenominational bickering and persecution. What a lot of people don't realize, or in some cases choose to ignore, is that the idea of the separation of church and state was never intended to prevent the practice or appearance of religion in a public venue. Quite the contrary. Prayer, sermons and public displays of faith were all commonplace until more recent years. It was a matter of keeping the government from adopting as preferable one denomination over another and religions other than Judeo-Christian were never figured into the equation. I would go so far as to say that it was intended to keep us from being subjected to the very kinds of things that we are dealing with today...attempts to abolish the one true God and His Son, Jesus Christ, from the public arena.
Anyway, I apologize for not making myself clearer. I do not find it in any way productive to bash any fellow believer's church. Our true fellowship comes from partaking in the death and resurrection of Christ. The Scripture says that it is not edifying for believers to indulge in the strife of tongues (loosely paraphrased). We have common enemies that we would do better to focus our energies on.