Having persuaded a majority of Americans that creationism is correct, lets get rid of some of the other “myths.”
The “wall of separation” is a metaphor deeply embedded in the American consciousness. Most Americans assume that the First Amendment prevents the mixing of politics and religion. The freedom of religion clauses protect individuals from the entanglement of religion with government and secure the right to freely exercise religious faith. America is a religiously pluralistic culture guided by a secular government.
But is this conventional wisdom of “secularized” government exactly what our Founding Fathers intended when they established our nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Some scholars think so. Other scholars claim that a contextualization of Colonial American culture and politics reveals a radically different definition of religious establishment and church/state relations than we have today. Some even claim it is the exact opposite of what the Founders intended.
That’s right. It’s a press release for a PBS distributed film, Wall of Separation. More of that liberal media. (Now there’s a real myth!)
from a recent post:
“…I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
let us suppose for a moment the impossible happened in america and an atheist was elected to the presidency. would he/she have the option of affirming this oath of office without reference to a deity as nonbelievers are allowed to do in court?
The Presidential oath is in the Constitution, Article II:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It’s said that Pierce and Hoover affirmed. J.Q. Adams swore on a copy the Constitution. After all he was taking an oath to uphold the Constitution not the Bible.
my ignorance is showing and tellingly, as i misconstrued your saturday’s quote as the presidential oath of office.
still, wherever one turns, the supernatural appears amid the federal — on the money, in the oath, in the form of congressional chaplains.
this seeming discrepancy is explained away by hairsplitting the difference between the separation of church and state, and the separation of state and god.
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. –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802
If one reads other quotes from Jefferson it is unambiguous that he believed that a distinct line needed to be drawn.