...or at least it should be. As the 4th of July has approached, I've been reading a lot of blogs that criticize the idea of "separation of church and state" by pointing out that those words appear nowhere in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights. Here's an example from one such
blog:
The Leftist social liberals supported by the Godless ACLU continue to harangue on the "separation of church and state" as justification for eliminating religious issues from public view.
The phrase "Separation of Church and State" has been bandied about for so long that many Americans believe that it is actually in the Constitution. In fact, those three words appear nowhere in the Constitution.
Oblivious to the irrelevance of their arguments, and at the same time refusing to acknowledge that no document of state, let alone the Constitution, has ever proposed such a concept, those on the Left have tried to convince the American people that our founding documents
warned of the dangers of mixing politics and religion.
In the absence of Constitutional evidence, the mere opinion of private individuals or groups that there should be absolute separation of church and state hardly creates a 'great American principle'. They have thus misled millions and worked against the public interest by damaging the commitment to ethics and moral values that come only through religious belief.
It is, I think, sad that these theists never quote the next sentence of the Declaration of Independance when they quote the one containing “unalienable Rights.” It goes:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed…”
Regardless of whom they attributed those rights to, the signers of the Declaration assign no further role to God in government. Even if that were not the case though, the Declaration of Independance is not the document that defined how the new country would be governed. That would be the job of the Constitution with it’s associated Bill of Rights. And God doesn’t get a government job in them either.
One of the other arguments these bloggers use is that when Thomas Jefferson used the term "separation of church and state" in his 1802
letter to the Danbury Baptists, the intention was only to reassure them that church would be protected from interference by the government. They then often say that that doesn't mean that the government needs protection from the church.
There's a little more to it than just protecting the church from government and it is not government that needs protection from the church. It’s the governed that need protection from churches attempting to push their agendas through government. In other words, the wall of separation between church and state was erected in order to protect the freedom of conscience of each individual as well as each church.
It is also entirely beside the point that the phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. It doesn’t have to. Jefferson used the term to describe what the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment did. That’s also what James Madison, the guy who actually wrote the Establishment Clause, was doing when he used the same phrase a couple years after Jefferson. This was a great thing those founding fathers did for all of us. It gave everyone the same kind of protection from what Madison called “the tyranny of the majority” in matters of freedom of conscience. It provided a level playing field where all ideas on religion can compete freely for the hearts and minds of people. It is an idea in which the United States will forever be remembered as the first nation in history that enshrined it in law as a fundamental principle of human rights. It is worth celebrating on this 4th of July. It is worth being thankful for.
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Comments
Well, Jake (the Evangelical Ex) is up to his old tricks again. He's removed your comments from his argument that this is a Christian nation. I guess they were too informative. His second part is up now based on a quote from Thomas Jefferson. I added a few quotes from him too. We'll see how long that one lasts.
Thanks for the heads up, Steven. It's not the first time. Ever try talking to a kid who's clapped his hands over his ears and yells "Neener, neener, neener!" to drown you out? That's what Jake reminds me of. It's really too bad, isn't it? You can't have a dialogue with someone who not only refuses to listen but won't even acknowledge you have anything to say.
Jefferson was in France as the Constitution was being written, but he wrote to those who were directly involved. He expressed the importance of a Bill of Rights. The University of Virginia collected his various papers. On their site you can find that Jefferson made ZERO references to a wall of separation or separation of church and state. However, there are at least SIX references to "freedom of religion." Apparently he thought that was a better general-purpose phrase to describe what the First Amendment should do.
I'm not sure what your point is, History Matters. Whatever expression he may have prefered prior to the final adopted version of the Establishment Clause has no bearing on his description of what the Clause did. That description was that it erected a wall of seperation between church and state.
lmfao idiots, keep church out of government, religion will kill humanity, god was thought of by man cause their weak instead looking towards themself for confidence
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