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Originally Posted by TheBigDog
There is no specific mention of separation of church and state in the US Constitution.
What is very interesting is that people on both sides of the argument use the same letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist group in Connecticut, back in 1801 as evidence for their respective arguments. On the separate side people tend to quote one line from the letter saying...
... and taking that to mean that the government should have nothing to do with religion whatsoever.
But when read in context to the letter he was replying to you find that he was not against being religious, or the governments recognition of religion at all. When the Baptists from Conneticut wrote ...
... Thomas jefferson was in agreement with them, and was assuring them that the first Amendment did indeed protect them from the State of Conneticut establishing an official religion, which was their concern.
In typical activist style that bit of misquoting has been used ever since in an effort to change the meaning of the Constitution rather than amending the Constitution to mean something different.
Bill
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Just incase people were interested:
Heres the entire letter written to Thomas Jefferson
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/baptist.htm
And here is his response back to them:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
Then here is an unedited copy of what he wrote, edited and deleted in the final copy.
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpost.html
