RG, you might read this to untwist the pretzel you have made of the meaning
here.
http://lexingtonlibertarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/misinterpretation-of-separation-of.html
...during that debate Madison made it plainly clear what motivated him and
what his purpose was in crafting the First amendment.
He said, “he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress
should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by
law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their
conscience, or that one sect might obtain pre-eminence, or two combined
together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to
conform.”
So we see the framers, whose context was that they came from European
monarchies with state religions, were determined that there would be no
national church and that everybody would have the religious freedom to
worship as they pleased.
That is a far cry from the modern application of this amendment. We have
gone from a “hands off” attitude to removing all religion from the
government. That was never the intent of those who wrote the rules. Today
we interpret the first amendment to remove all religion from the
marketplace. The 10th Amendment cannot be displayed on government
buildings, crosses are yanked out of remote areas and prayer while school
is in session, even a moment of silence is not allowed.
In that school prayer case, Wallace versus Jaffree, 1985, Justice Rhenquist
in the dissenting opinion said, “It is impossible to build sound
constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional
history, but unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly
freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.”
Massachusetts had a Puritan religion and required all members of government
to be members of Christian religion, right in its constitution which pre
dates the federal constitution.
States still have the right to establish a State Religion, the Federal
government does not.
73
DR
On Sep 19, 2016 1:55 PM, "R George" <xgeorge@xxxxxxx> wrote:
DR/RR,
FYI: When I use the word Constitution I include the Bill of Rights because
the 1st 10 were ratified the year following full
ratification of the Constitution. 1790/1791.
*Amendment I*
*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof;*
Below is from the guy who had a little something to do with the
Constitution - *Thomas Jefferson.*
“… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American
people which declared that their legislature
should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free
exercise thereof,’ *thus building a wall of separation between Church and
State.”* ~~ Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802
“[E]very one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and
mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the
President of the U.S. *and no authority to direct the religious exercises
of his constituents.*” ~~ Letter to Rev. Samuel Miller, January 23, 1808
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. *This marks the lowest grade of *
*ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always
avail themselves for their own purposes.”* ~~ letter to Alexander von
Humboldt, December 6, 1813
And an excerpt from a favorite founding father of mine - *Thomas Paine
(Age of Reason)*
*"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the
Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
church, *
*nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.*
*All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and
enslave mankind, *
*and monopolize power and profit.*
*I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise;
they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is
necessary to *
*the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity
does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in
professing to believe what he does not believe.*
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it,
that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted
and prostituted
the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to
things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of
every other crime.
*He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to
qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive
any thing more destructive to morality than this?*
Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed
by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of
church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian,
or Turkish, had so
effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon
established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the
system of government should
be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before
the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the
system of religion would
follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would
return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no
more.
Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending
some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The
Jews have their Moses; the Christians their
Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as
if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or
the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to
Moses, face to face; the Christians say,
that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that
their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of
those churches accuse the other
of unbelief; *and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.*
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed
further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word
revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion,
means something communicated immediately from God to man."
Continued here:
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/reason1.htm
RG
On 9/16/2016 5:14 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
RR,
You're absolutely right on that one, Ron.
73
DR
On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Ron Ristad <ristad@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution.
This is an interpretation by the Supreme Court. A future Supreme Court
could make a different interpretation.
The fact is that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written by
Christians and are based on Christian ideals. This is why it is not like
Sharia Law or the Talmud.
People who want to change it to make it more like their culture and their
religion claim that it was designed so that it could change with changing
conditions but this is bullshit. That would be like changing the Ten
Commandments.
-RR, Sick of political correctness that I never agreed to and sick of all
the bullshit..
