Eagler, with all due respect, you're wrong
. And I have the quotes to prove it
The US has a great constitution, there's no doubt about in. In some areas, it is much superior to what we have here in Denmark. Here, I have to go through, with foul taste in my mouth, a state sponsored exclusive religion. I have to live in a country that essentially is a Lutheran-Evangelical one, eve if it's just words. I'm very intersted in a separation of church and state here and believe it to be doable, especially since the success seen in our neighboring country, Sweden.
Let me pull out some quotes to support my claim of not being totally ignorant about the separation of church and state:
I. U.S. Constitution and U.S. Treaties and State Constitutions
The Constitution of the United States (1787-1788; 1st Ten Amendments ["Bill of Rights"] ratified 1791; no reference to any god is to be found in the body or
in the amendments to the Constitution) Pretty clear cut.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
freedom of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (Amendment 1,The Constitution
of the United States.)
This one is actually fantastic. Such foresight in those days. Must be admired.
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion--as it has itself no character of enmity against the law,
religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], ... ("Article 11, Treaty of Peace and Friendship between The United States and the Bey and Subjects of
Tripoli of Barbary," 1796-1797. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. Edited by Hunter Miller. Vol. 2, 1776-1818, U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1931, p. 365. From George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 45.
Settles the "one nation under God" issue.
To support it:
Now be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said treaty do, by and within the consent of
the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. ("Treaty of Peace and Friendship between The United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary," 1796-1797.
Showing the freethinking spirit of some of the founding fathers:
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor. (Thomas Jefferson, notes for a speech, c. 1776. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 498.)
A quote showing how the American approach and founding fathers positively affected Europe:
Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Wythe from Paris, August 13, 1786. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 311.)
Thosse favouring a small government will love this one:
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.(Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782; from George Seldes, ed., The
Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363
Also relevant:
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry,
January 26, 1799. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499.)
More relevant to this discussion:
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression. (Thomas Jefferson, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1801; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.)
And this one, about prayers and fasting:
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. It must
then rest with the States, as far as it can be in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer.
That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises, which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It
must be meant, too, that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and
imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription, perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation less a
law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is in the best interests of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its
discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time
or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for
itself the times of these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own
hands, where the Constitution has deposited it. (Thomas Jefferson, just before the end of his second term, in a letter to Samuel Miller--a Presbyterian
minister--on January 23, 1808; from Willson Whitman, arranger, Jefferson's Letters, Eau Claire, Wisconsin: E. M. Hale and Company, ND, pp. 241-242.
Quite clear as well.
This Thomas Jefferson dude seems like a fellow I'd have fun drinking with:
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to
his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever
preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio
Spofford, 1814; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371)
One for us atheists:
... If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some
do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in
support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism,
in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue,
then, must have had some other foundation than love of God. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The
American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 358.)
And:
... Jefferson, who as a careful historian had made a study of the origin of the maxim [that the common law is inextricably linked with Christianity], challenged
such an assertion. He noted that "the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ
pronounced or that such a character existed .... What a conspiracy this, between Church and State." (Leo Pfeffer, Religion, State, and the Burger Court,
Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 121.)
This one is directly applicable to the topic:
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. (James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822; published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by
Saul K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.)
Something for the current set of American politicians to learn from:
[on Washington's first inaugural speech in April 1789]
. .. That he was not just striking a popular attitude as a politician is revealed by the absence of of the
usual Christian terms: he did not mention Christ or even use the word "God." Following the phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he referred to "the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men," to "the benign parent of the human race." (James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New
Nation [1783-1793], Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970, p. 184.)
Deism of course is the belief that a god or gods created the world but left it at that and does not meddle further into the affairs of the universe.
How about some protection from religion (freedom from religion, even)
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other business government
has to do therewith. (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending Conflict," in Ronald C.
White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1990, p. 72.)
E PLURIBUS UNUM, latin for "one out of many" does not refer to any god or religious matter, it's a direct reference to the creation of one nation, from 13 states.
There are a lot of quotes that can be used. Just taking a cross section to support that mixing religion and state is in violation with the ideals of the founding fathers. They'd probably be screaming loudly if they saw the current state of affairs. I'll post more if needed.
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Baron Claus "StSanta" Von Ribbentroppen
9./JG 54 "Grünherz"
"We are the light at the end of your sorry little tunnel." - A. Eldritch
[This message has been edited by StSanta (edited 01-21-2001).]
