I go on the internet to find the exact article of seperation of shurch and state proposed by rosevelt...... and I get a butt load of christian extreemist websites claiming that the act never existed that it just a myth. I keep looking and I cant find it.....does it exist ..if so can someone post the exact article or act or whatever it is?


JoAnne

Amendments to the Constitution
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PROPOSED BY CONGRESS, AND RATIFIED BY THE LEGISLATURES OF THE SEVERAL STATES, PURSUANT TO THE FIFTH ARTICLE OF THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION (See Note 12)
Article [I.] (See Note 13)
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 press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Citation: 374 U.S. 203 (1963)



Abington School District v. Schempp

Concepts: Bible Readings/Reserved Clause v. Establishment Clause


Facts

A Pennsylvania statute required that "at least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read at the opening of each public ... school day." A student could be excused from the bible reading with a written note from a parent or guardian. The Schempp family, who had children in the Abington school system, disapproved of the bible reading because it violated their religious beliefs. The family refused to write a letter to have their children excused, and took legal action to stop the school district from conducting the daily bible readings. The district court ruled in favor of the Schempp family. The school district appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.


Issue

Whether a state, in creating a statute that promotes prayer in its public school system, is violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which states that the government may not establish any religion.


Opinion

The Court declared the law calling for "prayer in school" unconstitutional because it represented an establishment of religion by government. Stating that this was a direct violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, the Court prohibited bible readings in public schools.

Idealy ou wnat the seperation of church and state but I dont know about with the current Bush adminstartion.

hey..thanks all...I have been kinda worried abouit that. I know we are not alowd to talk about politics on this site (due to goverment policy about npo's and political action)
But it concerns me how much Bush administartion is "estabishing a religion" And thats where I guess in CAN be a concern on this site. I am concerned that Bush and his administation may futher open doors for the breeding of cults, but with an "estabished religion" the public would be more defenceless to it. Look at Christianity's reign in the middle ages to the 1700;s....one big, ugly cult. I think people should be more concerned to defend our rights not to have a public religion.

Corboy, rmoderator....If I stepped over the line ..just say so.

JoAnne

The erosion of separation of church and state is of real concern to me too, NativeFlower.

I do think cult formation is on the rise. Non-christian groups and splinter Christian groups are using the fear of a religious America as both a recruiting tool and a way to politicize members. Many of these are becoming pretty extreme in their rhetoric.

Add to that the already growing idea that one powerful religious group should have MORE power in political decisions and it's becoming explosive.

Sadly, the right of the individual to have their own beliefs and relationship with whatever God or Gods they wish seems to have been buried under the scuffle.

It comes down to a simple problem: Cults crave control, and what greater control could there be than having the State recognize and enforce your beliefs?

I removed the last post, feeling it was too political and specific. I'm trying to keep in general here. I don't care what beliefs a person chooses to have, so long as they aren't telling me they are now MY beliefs too.

I noticed by the date that this is an extremely old topic, but I would like to put in my two-cents about this topic. When I think of what the founding fathers meant by separation of church and state I think of England, or even many of the muslim countries in the world. When the state and religion are one there is no freedom. Think of what this has done with Northern Ireland and England; or even Iran or Iraq. I think that separation of church and state means freedom from religion; in other words, I can choose to join or not and not be penalized for that choice. If I want to practice another faith or even join a cult, I may do so, the government does not dictate that choice for me. Praying at an event does not mean that the state is endorsing one faith or telling you that you must embrace the faith of the person represented. I do not even think allowing a moment of silence in a classroom violates this separation. Now, if I were ordered to participate or told that my prayer (or no prayer at all) was mandatory, then that line has been crossed. America allows freedom of religion or even freedom from religion, should you so choose. Also, there is your right to disagree with me and my faith; but I choose to respect your right to disagree. Religion should not be part of the state and the state does not need to control church; the Vatican is a good example of a church controlled state. This country exists only because of religion. Can you imagine choosing to be a pagan or atheist or protestant in this country? There is a dangerous trend in Iran right now where non-muslims are being forced to wear different colors or bands (not exactly sure of the exact nature of the clothing) to show their religion or lack of being muslim. This harkens back to Nazi-Germany. How scary........

You are right and it is true that the US was founded on religious freedom and not by fundamentalist christians.

[www.sullivan-county.com]
Excerpts from:

The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
by Steven Morris, in Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995

Also see Deism Links Page

"The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New testaments.

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
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...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)



George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From:
George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)


John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"

It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
From:
The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.


Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
From:
Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.

James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
From:
The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.

Ethan Allen, whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, "That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised "to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God." Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those "written in the great book of nature."
From:
Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)



Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion...has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble." He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From:
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1970.


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The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency until 1956, during the McCarthy witch hunts.

What bothers me about this is that I am a christian. I, too, want separation of church and state; even from other "christians". There is this huge movement among fundamental christians to restore America to it's original christian heritage and to bring some sort of moral code to our society. The problem with this thinking is "who's moral code will we follow?".... Will there become a christian "taliban"?

I understand christians, and non-christians, frustations about what is going on in society, but we must let the leaders of our country decide our laws and not our religious leaders.