On separation of church and state
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/121905/opi_ltte1001.shtml

On separation of church and state
The fact that the Constitution does not mention God may indeed be a
mistake, at any rate it does not advance Mr. Rob Mertzweiller's position on
the church-state divide published in the Readers' Views on Dec. 8.

The Mayflower Compact of 1620 declares that the pilgrims had come for the
purpose of evangelizing the nation to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. The
Declaration of Independence acknowledges the existence of a Divine Creator.
The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, Article III, states "Religion, morality and
knowledge being necessary to good government ...." All these documents
record what our Founding Fathers really believed.

Only an ACLU lawyer could claim that "Congress shall make no law respecting
the establishment of religion or prohibit the free expression thereof ..."
means anything other than the government is prohibited from setting up a
state religion like Britain had at the time. A time when it was against
British law to print a Bible in the English language in America.

Here is what the Founding Fathers really thought about religion. In 1777
Continental Congress ordered the importation of 20,000 Bibles for the
American troops. The Bible was facilitated and endorsed by the U.S.
Congress. The Capitol building served as a church building for decades.
Many of the statues in the Capitol are of ministers of the Gospel. Doesn't
appear like there was much of a church-state divide in the beginning. There
are more examples like these that can be furnished if anyone doubts that
the overwhelming majority of the men who founded this country were
Christian and the rest at least believed in a Divine Creator.

The separation of church and state in our Constitution is there to protect
us from the government, not religion. By the way, doesn't the denial of a
child the time to pray violate the free exercise of religion? Would that
Mr. Mertzweiller were more concerned about the increase in immorality such
as high school students shooting each other and their teachers since prayer
was banned from school. His fear of teaching those students a fundamental
belief in right and wrong such as defined by the Ten Commandments is
unfounded.

Hurricane Katrina taught us something about depending on government
agencies, bureaucrats and giveaway programs when disaster strikes. The
fundamental beliefs of earning a living, not killing, not stealing and
taking care of yourself instead of depending on government employees would
have served the victims better.

Kenny Cleveland

Denham Springs


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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education

You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS á Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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