Many of the colonists had come to America from various countries that had state churches, such as Germany, (the Lutheran denomination) England (the Anglican denomination) France and Spain and Italy (the Catholic denomination.)
Some colonies had already established official denominations. There was a groundswell in America against an official denomination.
In Massachusetts, where the Congregational denomination was the official religion, a Baptist pastor named Isaac Backus, contended with John Adams, who was to become our second president, for freedom from denominational control. The idea seemed so unrealistic that Adams said, “You might as well expect a change in the solar system as to expect us to give up our established churches.”
About that time there was to be an election for a Congressional seat. Baptist pastor John Leland was a 5-1 favorite to defeat James Madison, who became know as the Father of our Constitution. The two met beneath an old oak tree in Richmond, Va., at the corner where two streets crossed that today bare their names Leland and Madison Avenues. Their conflict was over the issue related to a denomination becoming the official state denomination under the new Constitution. Leland argued there was no restriction in the Constitution against it. Madison promised Leland, who really didn’t want to run for office, that it he would withdraw he would propose a Bill of Rights guaranteeing there would be no official denomination.
Leland withdrew and Madison kept his word. When the first congress convened in January 1789, early in the meeting Madison proposed the first Ten Amendments to our constitution. The first one put restraints on congress asserting in part: “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion (assuring there would be no official state sponsored denomination), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (affirming all denominations would have equal freedom of expression in the market place of ideas).
This is the separation of which Thomas Jefferson wrote in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association dated Jan. 1, 1802, assuring them Baptists and all denominations were protected from government control. The next day, Jefferson attended church services held in the House of Representatives, Jan. 2, 1802, and for years thereafter.
Madison was amenable to the idea of separation in that his mentor was the Rev. John Witherspoon, the Presbyterian minister who was an intimate friend and confidant of President Washington, a signer of the Constitution and Commissioner of the Congress.
As evidence of this freedom that same Congress appointed chaplains for both houses, authorized chaplains for the military, appropriated funds to evangelize native Americans and concluded the inauguration of President Washington with a worship service in St. Paul’s Chapel, an Anglican Church.
On the day they approved the First Amendment, they called on President Washington to declare a day of “public prayer and thanksgiving.”
The freedom afforded by the amendment allowed the two primary text books in the public schools to be the Bible and the Watts Hymnal.
The original Bill of Rights placed restrictions on the state, not the church. The role has now been reversed.
The Rev. Dr. Nelson Price is pastor emeritus of Roswell Street Baptist Church.
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Price develops throughout his column the correct idea that secularism is intended to restrict government, but then he makes a false, unsupportable assertion in his last paragraph, as if he had made that case instead. The original Constitution and Bill of Rights assuredly did, by careful design, limit government. But a crucial limitation on churches was as clearly designed: for the sake of individual liberty, governments are not allowed to make religious decisions of any kind for citizens, and churches are not allowed to use governmental power to further their doctrines.
No matter how frequently and falsely Price denounces it, the original intent of the framers was to keep government and religion from working together to abuse citizens.
1. atheists are not automatically on the political left (case in point)
2. how can someone hate something they don't believe in?
3. and don't take it personally, I'm sure there are thousands of gods you don't believe in either, it just so happens I don't believe in one more than you...
Since you're all about "freedom," I reserve my right to practice no religion and, if I choose, not to believe in God or gods.
Keep your religion off my government.
I defy anyone, to find any mention of God in the U.S. Constitution. Our rights come from the first three words "We the People" not God the Almighty.
Would that the majority of Americans read your column. For years now , I have heard the people argue that "separation of church and state" from the incorrect and unknowing view that it was to protect the state from the church. If they spent ten minutes of their lives looking into it they would.
This backward view was strengthened by the Supreme Court in Engel vs. Vitale by circuitous thinking stating that since it was a government school, it was a government prayer that students were saying.Thus violating the students' rights in the separation issue.
In later years , this thinking was used when President Clinton argued that it depended on what the definition of "is" is.
However, like most things, the death of religion in America has been hastened by those who wear the cloth.
You insist on trying to make the case for an officially recognized Christian church in America.
No doubt you favor the Baptist denomination.
The Founders intended no such church.
There is no role for any religion in American politics.