“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
—
President Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury, CT Baptist Association, 1802.
Given the sentiments expressed by many of the Republican candidates (I see you, Herman Cain), and at Rick Perry’s rally over the weekend, this seems like a useful reminder of what at least one of the Framers actually thought about the relationship between church and state. It helps to remember that Baptists were considered outliers and extremists at the time, and the Danbury Association’s members were worried they would be persecuted.
(via politicalprof)
Plus another founding father, Thomas Payne, was a big old atheist whose life’s work was The Necessity of Atheism.
(via bapeonion)
