Linkmeister

Church and State

Pursuant to the commentary below about President Bush and religion, and in light of this bill in the House (it calls for a national day of prayer and fasting), I thought it would be interesting to see what Thomas Jefferson had to say on the subject. Here's the text of the founding precept behind the First Amendment's espousal of separation of church and state: A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. It was introduced into the Virginia Assembly in 1779 (although not passed until 1785). An excerpt:

that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical...

Mr. Jefferson said this about its final passage in his autobiography:

"The bill for establishing religious freedom," says the author, "I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67)

Sorry, Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen of the United States House of Representatives, Mr. Jefferson still makes more sense to me than you do.