The Founding Fathers went to great lengths to separate church and state. They knew the history of religious wars in Europe, and they wanted the new nation to be free of such rivalries. They inserted into the Constitution the clear mandate that there would be no religious test to hold office. They added in the First Amendment to the institution that Congress was not allowed to establish a state religion and guaranteed freedom to practice one’s own religion.
Someone created this handy compilation of quotes from some of our most prominent men of the Founding era:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I always found “The Jefferson Bible” interesting. “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting, with a razor and glue, numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson’s condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.” It was described as “revolutionary” by one historian. Having a separation of Church and state gave him the freedom to do this.
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Jefferson was also a Deist as were many of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The rest is a pull quote:
Religious beliefs — Jefferson was a religious man who rejected traditional Christian doctrines, such as the Virgin Birth, original sin, and the resurrection of Jesus. He believed that Jesus’ message was corrupted by the apostle Paul, the Gospel writers, and Protestant reformers. Jefferson also believed that human reason was a reliable means of solving social and political problems.
Deism is a philosophical belief that values reason over revelation and rejects supernatural aspects of Christianity. Deists believe in the moral teachings of Jesus Christ, but not that he was the son of God or that he performed miracles.
Jefferson’s actions as president also reflect his Deist beliefs:
He cut out supernatural elements from the Bible, retaining only the parables and ethical teachings.
He refused to issue religious proclamations as president.
He endorsed the use of federal funds to build churches and support Christian missionaries.
Jefferson’s religious views were influenced by the British Unitarian Joseph Priestley
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Very interesting. Thanks for sharing Lloyd!
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Basically perfect. Thank you Diane.
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What is wrong with mixing religion and governance is what is happening in our nation today, extreme polarization along religious and cultural lines which is divisive, particularly in red led states. Kalama Harris didn’t attend the Al Smith dinner. Why should she? The Catholic Church has been actively supporting the transfer of funds out of our secular public schools so public dollars can pay for religious education. I doubt The Pope approves of Donald Trump, but the American Roman Catholic Church under the influence of Leonard Leo has largely been behind Donald Trump.
IMO religion should be a matter of personal choice, and it should be paid for by your personal dollars. Public dollars should be reserved for affairs of the state like our all important public schools whose responsibility it is to provide the nation will informed, responsible citizens.https://progressive.org/op-eds/leonard-leos-dark-money-network-threatens-democracy/
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Imagine being in the room to hear the Founding Fathers debate this!
“So which kind of Christianity would we be? Catholic or Protestant?”
“Which kind of Protestant?”
“Church of England is definitely out!”
“OK, how about NONE at all and just let the people choose any or no religion for themselves.”
“Wow! What a novel idea –just as unique as our written Constitution! (which “Constitutional Monarchies” like the United Kingdom STILL don’t have codified in a single document today –though they’ve managed to do pretty well without one).
Thank goodness for the Enlightenment! If only the crazies today knew, understood and accepted truth. We would probably not be where we are now if they did not consider being “woke” so reprehensible.
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I often wonder why so many “Christians” want to simply ignore the First Amendment’s mandate of freedom of religion. As a court recently told Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (Yale Law!), who wants to stop the media from reporting on the abortion referendum, “It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
Madison and Jefferson knew quite well what happens when the government favors one religion, or even any religion, over others. That way theocracy beckons. The United States is a nation of many religions and also nonbelievers. But a large segment of Christians insist that this must be a “Christian” nation. Just read Project 2025 to see a hint of what’s in store for us if we take that road.
We must have nothing but contempt for these people. We must shout out that they want to destroy the Constitution (which they surely do) and instead put religion in charge, at gunpoint if necessary. Doing so would mean the death of the Constitution, which is what they really want.
NEVER forget this.
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This “Christian” nation certainly knows how to lie. CBN promotes the Orange Buffoon.
‘Jesus Is Lord’: A Tale of Two Rallies
Oct 21, 2024
Two rallies—and three events—over the last week presented a series of revelatory moments that should burn themselves into Christians’ minds, culminating with the way two of the most important figures in the election responded to the phrase, “Jesus is Lord.”
I thought you would NOT like this story from breakingchristiannews.com
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The Thirty Years war (1718-1648) was primarily a war for Hapsburg control that used religion as a proxy for politics. The horrifying tales English Puritans read of Hapsburg depredations in the Protestant areas of Bohemia led to the tension that fed the fires of the English Revolution in the 1640s. The generation of the founding fathers, like the generation before them, had a distinct historical memory of the wars, and knew the need to assure freedom of religion and conscience, which they found politically necessary to enshrine in the First Amendment. As Madison said, separation of church and state feeds the legitimacy of both.
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Righties no longer care that they are the minority. They think God is behind them, so any lying, cheating or imposing their will & supposed values on the overly tolerant, open-minded, inclusive, “godless” lefties is acceptable to them. Therefore, as miserable & corrupt as Trump is, he got them their Heritage Foundation backed Supreme Court Justices, and will surely implement the tenets of Project 2025. So Trump must be defeated, but these Maga Republicans also need to be rejected until that party can come back to sanity & break out of their Cult of Trump mania.
Also, it’s criminal that churches get away with being tax exempt, and then flaunting it in our faces by supporting political candidates on both sides. Politicians are too afraid to go after them cuz their fervent followers will cry that their religion is being attacked. That fear-mongering & whining is just like corporations crying that taxing them will force them to move out of the country or trim the workforce or some other BS. Both the pastors & the corporations depend on the ignorance & sheep-like tendencies of the masses to enable their continued fleecing of the system. It’s disgusting & discouraging.
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Freedom FROM Religion
The constitutional principle of a “wall of separation” between government and religion in America goes back even far further than our 1797 Constitution: Already back in 1635, Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island Colony, declared that a “wall of separation” must forever separate American government from any religion. In Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Connecticut Baptist Convention, Jefferson quoted Williams’ “wall of separation” phrase to explain the meaning of The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, also compiled his own version of the Bible, known as The Jefferson Bible, that basically treated Jesus as an admirable philosopher, but not divine. Jefferson’s non-Christian edition of the Bible became widely popular in the new United States, and for decades every new member of Congress was given a copy of The Jefferson Bible when sworn in to Congress.
Our Founding Fathers’ insistence on separating government from any and all religion came about because England had imposed mandatory Anglican church membership in the colonies for anyone who wanted to participate in government; so, although many of our Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians, they were compelled to join the official British government’s Christian Anglican religion in order to be able to vote or take any part in government.
James Madison, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Constitution” because so many of our Constitution’s key principles are derived from his ideas, wrote that “the purpose of the separation of church and state is to keep forever from our shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries”.
That bloody “ceaseless strife” of religious war in Europe was well known to Madison and to our nation’s other Founding Fathers because they had recent ancestors who had suffered and been killed because of the endless warfare between Christian religions throughout Europe during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Those centuries of bloodshed and misery followed the Protestant Reformation which led to the establishment of dozens of warring Protestant religions, none of which agreed with each other in their dogma, and all of which disagreed with the Catholic church.
Thousands and countless thousands of people died as each Christian religion tried to force their version of religious beliefs on the others.
George Washington, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Nation”, was in complete agreement with the Establishment Clause and wrote that “the United States government is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” He was compelled to attend Anglican church services but never took Communion because he refused to be hypocritical.
Today, some who argue against the separation of church and state claim that when the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause says that government shall make no law “respecting the establishment of religion” it means only that the government shall not establish a religion and that government is free to provide all manner of support for existing religions. However, in the grammatical syntax of the time in which the First Amendment was written, the phrase “the establishment of religion” refers to “established religions”, not to establishing a government religion. Written in the grammatical syntax of our current times, the First Amendment would state that the government shall make no law “respecting established religions”.
Correctly read, and knowing the intent of Our Founding Fathers which they clearly expressed, the First Amendment provides Americans with freedom FROM religion.
And yet, today, self-righteous religious zealots — some of whom are even on the U.S. Supreme Court — are driving our nation toward a time of bloody religious warfare in America; warfare that will divide and weaken our nation and allow our enemies abroad to destroy us. That destructive division is already on the stage with the demands that The Ten Commandments be posted in schools and public places and that public schools must teach the Bible: The coming conflict looms with the question of whose version of the Ten Commandments will be displayed and whose version of the Bible will be taught.
Protestants and Catholics each have their own version of the Ten Commandments and their own version of the Bible. Whose version of the Commandments and whose version of the Bible would be posted and taught in public schools?
In the Protestant version of the Commandments, the Second Commandment says that it is sinful to make “graven images”, such as statues — the Catholic version of the Commandments says nothing about graven images, so Catholic churches are filled with statues of Mary and the saints. Will Catholic children in public schools be shamed by their classmates as sinful because Catholic churches contain statues of Mary and the saints?
If America doesn’t remain true to the constitutional rule established by Our Founding Fathers that our government must be separated from all religion by a solid wall, bloody conflict will ultimately follow…and a weakened America will then be conquered by its international enemies.
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Any religious group that describes itself as “the one true church” or ” chosen” is immediately suspect in my view.
The men who wrote our founding documents were well aware of the disastrous results of the Thirty Years War.
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The argument that this is a Christian nation because it was founded by mostly Christians is flabby at best. By his thinking, the country should be a male nation because it was founded by males or a Caucasian nation because it was founded by Caucasians, or an intellectual nation because it was found by intellectuals or maybe an English nation because it was founded by Englishmen.
Or maybe it is an old nation because it was founded by old men. I think their thinking caps were mistaken as dunce caps.
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