Words that I have seen repeated many times over the years, yet they have no validity in reality. The founders of our country were far from perfect but they were at least wise enough to protect us from that form of oppression when they created the Constitution. Now your first obvious response will be to say that the Constitution doesn't say anything about separation of church and state. This is true, I won't deny that. However, you also won't find the words, "fair trial" and many other things that our society views as Constitutional rights. And you won't find anything about God, Jesus, or any references to a higher being.
I could also easily argue that while the second ammendment gives you the right to bear arms (as part of a well-regulated militia), if you use those exact words our government obviously would have the right to define what type of arms you may and may not own. After all, it doesn't say you have the right to own any weapon you choose, such as a shotgun or assault weapon. It doesn't even say you have the right to own a handgun. It simply states that you have the right to bear arms and does not specify what type.
However, instead of arguing about technicalities such as the exact phrases used in our Constitution, what we should be focusing on is INTENT. We can easily discover the intentions of our founding fathers by examining their words and actions, which I will discuss in a moment. A few years ago I spent several months doing extensive research regarding the beliefs of our founding fathers and the separation of church and state. Here are some of their own words regarding the church-state issue and people attempting to force their religious views on the rest of the population.
John Adams
John Adams was a Unitarian who didn't believe in many aspects of Christianity such as the virgin birth.
"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." - John Adams (Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary. Also known as the Treaty of Tripoli.)
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation." - John Adams (Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary. Also known as the Treaty of Tripoli.)
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses." - John Adams (A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America)
"Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind." - John Adams (A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America)
"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu." - John Adams (A letter to Thomas Jefferson)
"Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion." - John Adams
"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society. - John Adams (A letter to Dr. Price)
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson was considered an Atheist by many people during his time but he was actually a Deist. He did not believe in the divinity of Jesus and most other Christian views. He (along with his friend, Thomas Paine) were two of the most important figures in the battle for reliigous freedom.
"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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to the Baptists of Danbury)
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to Baron von Humboldt)
"By our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and by three years imprisonment, without bail. A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed from him, and put, by the authority of a court, into more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of that religious slavery, under which a people have been willing to remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil freedom. The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia)
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." - Thomas Jefferson
"Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible to restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; ... that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; ... that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy [sic], which at once destroys all religious liberty ... ; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities." - Thomas Jefferson (Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia)
"No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar." - Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia)
"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson (Inaugural Address)
"Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to George Wythe)
"Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature." - Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia)
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." - Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia)
"We have solved by fair experiment the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to James Madison)
"And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. ... error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. ... I deem the essential principles of our government . ..[:] Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; ... freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected." - Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address)
"The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." - Thomas Jefferson
"All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution": freedom for religion, but also freedom from religion" - Thomas Jefferson
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." - Thomas Jefferson
"Because religious belief or non-belief is such an important part of every
person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches
that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson (To the Virginia Baptists)
"The law for religious freedom has put down the aristocracy of
the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to John Adams)
"If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth] prevail over fanaticism." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to Jared Sparks)
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling in religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from.... I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it's exercises, it's discipline, or it's doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it. I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted.... Be this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U.S. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." - Thomas Jefferson (A latter to Samuel Miller)
"For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement of England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of the Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law ... This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it ... That system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians." - Thomas Jefferson (A letter to Thomas Cooper)
"Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds." - Thomas Jefferson (to Charles Clay)
James Madison
Many people belief Madison was a Deist but there is very little evidence to show that he was religious at all. During his term as president, he vetoed an act that would have incorporated the Protestant Episcopal Church in the District of Columbia because it violated the establishment clause. He also vetoed a bill that would have granted public land to a Baptist Chuch for the same reason.
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." - James Madison
"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents." - James Madison (A letter to Thomas Jefferson)
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." - James Madison
"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." - James Madison (A letter to Edward Livingston)
"It was the Universal opinion of the Century preceding the last, that Civil Government could not stand without the prop of a Religious establishment, and that the Christian religion itself, would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its Clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously corroborates the disproof of both opinions. The Civil Government, tho' bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State." - James Madison (A letter to Robert Walsh)
"It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others." - James Madison (A letter to Reverand Jasper Adams)
"It was the belief of all sects at one time that the establishment of Religion by law, was right & necessary; that the true religion ought to be established in exclusion of every other; and that the only question to be decided was which was the true religion. The example of Holland proved that a toleration of sects, dissenting from the established sect, was safe & even useful. The example of the Colonies, now States, which rejected religious establishments altogether, proved that all Sects might be safely & advantageously put on a footing of equal & entire freedom.... We are teaching the world the great truth that Govts do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Gov." - James Madison (A Letter to Edward Livingston)
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison (address to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia)
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison (address to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia)
"To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I
have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to
the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem
Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical
distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purityof both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself" - James Madison (A letter to North Carolina Baptist Churches)
"The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error
so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians,
as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without
a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be
supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical
Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity." - James Madison (A letter to F.L. Schaeffer)
"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects." - James Madison (A letter to Bradford)
"In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects." - James Madison (from his column in the Federalist Papers)
"I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of religion from civil jurisdiction, in every case where it does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always been a favorite principal with me; and it was not with my approbation that the deviation from it took place in congress, when they appointed chaplains, to be paid from the national treasury. It would have been a much better proof to their constituents of their pious feeling if the members had contributed for the purpose a pittance from their own pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done maybe to apply to the constitution the maxim of the law, de minimis non curant." - James Madison
"Every new and successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance"
Thomas Paine
"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity." - Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man)
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the profession of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?" - Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
Benjamin Franklin
"I am fully of your Opinion respecting religious Tests; but, tho' the People of Massachusetts have not in their new Constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that People were 100 Years ago, we must allow they have gone great Lengths in Liberality of Sentiment on religious Subjects; and we may hope for greater Degrees of Perfection, when their Constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian Preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without Salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine Tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure Religion itself, as the Emoluments of it. When a Religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its Professors are obliged to call for help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." - Benjamin Franklin
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England." - Benjamin Franklin
George Washington
"If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution." - George Washington (A letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia)
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." - George Washington (A letter to the congregation of Touro Synagogue)
"Among many other weighty objections to the Measure, it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess." - George Washington (A letter to John Hancock)
Other Myths
Well, if the words and actions of our founders isn't enough proof, would like more? You won't find the word "God" or any mention of Christianity anywhere in the Constitution. Some people wanted an acknowlegdement of Christianity to be added but their efforts were rejected. The founding fathers were obviously more wise than people of today.
But our legal system was based on the Ten Commandments right? The United States Constitution was based mainly on English common law. The only three legal issues even related to the commandments are murder, perjury and theft. Each of which has existed as rules in many other non-Christian cultures, some of which pre-date the commandments. If the founders had actually wanted to make this a Christian nation then why not include all of the other biblical commandements?
But the majority of people were devout Christians during that time in history, right? No, according to historians, only 10% to 30% of the population were actually members of congregations between 1780 and the early 1800's and many of our founding fathers (Jefferson, Madison, etc..) were Deists.
Source for statistic: "Mapping America's Past: A Historical Atlas" - Henry Holt
Oh but our currency features the phrase, "In God we trust." so we must be a Christian nation, right? Wrong. The original currency did not have any mention of God and the original motto was E PLURIBUS UNUM, which means "Of Many, One." The phrase was added after the Civil War, due to pressure from the very vocal religious groups.
But the fact that the words "One nation, under God" appear in our pledge of allegiance must be the proof we need, right? Wrong. Once again, the original pledge written by Francis Bellamy did not include that phrase or any mention of God. It was added in 1954 during the McCarthyism period, due to pressure from religious groups.
Are you seeing a pattern here yet?
Honestly, put aside the evidence I have given you to support my claim and think rationally for a moment. These are people who fled from religious persecution and oppression in another country and witnessed the same oppression occuring in the colonies against groups like the Quakers. Do you actually think that they would make the same mistakes when forming this new nation? The facts are that the most important founders illustrated their support of separation of chuch and state through their words and actions, it was supported by many religious groups and by some of the most prominent religious leaders of the time, such as Isaac Backus, John Leland, etc..
Bonus Question: But freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion, right? Wrong. If you are going to implement any laws based on religious beliefs then it must obviously come from a specific religion. Therefore, you are violating the 1st amendment by attempting to turn the views from your religion into actual laws. Since we can't do that then there is your freedom from religion. Freedom of religion IS freedom from religion as well. It is simple logic.
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