SHOULD THERE BE A WALL OF SEPARATION" BETWEEN CHURCH

Should there be a partition of separation" between Church and State?

Should there be a partition of separation between Church and State?

"It is factual that the literal phrase 'separation of church and state' does not appear in the Constitution, but that does not signify the notion isn't there. The First Amendment states "Congress will make no regulation respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" What does that mean? A little annals is cooperative: In an 1802 letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson, then leader, declared that the American persons through the First Amendment had erected a "wall of separation between place of worship and state." Jefferson, however, was not the only premier number of the post-revolutionary period to use the period separation. James Madison, considered to be the Father of the Constitution, said in an 1819 letter, "[T]he 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 and state." (DelFattore, 2004) In an earlier, undated essay (probably early 1800s), Madison wrote, "Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." As eminent church-state scholar Leo Pfeffer remarks in his book, Church, State and Freedom, "It is true, of course, that the saying 'separation of place of worship and state' does not appear in the Constitution. But it was inescapable that some convenient period should come into reality to verbalize a standard so apparently and widely held by the American persons the right to a fair test is usually acknowledged to be a legal principle; yet the term 'fair test' is not discovered in the Constitution. To bring the issue even nearer dwelling, who would deny that 'religious liberty' is a legal principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these periods, including 'separation of place of worship and state,' have obtained in America would appear to verify rather than disparage their truth as rudimentary American democratic standards. (Kagan, et. al. 2003)

Thus, it is solely befitting to talk of the "constitutional standard of church-state parting" since that saying summarizes what the First Amendment's belief clauses do-they separate place of worship and state. Religious Right activists have endeavoured for decades to make light of Jefferson's "wall of parting" response to the Danbury Baptists, trying to brush aside it as a hastily in writing note designed to win the favor of a political constituency. But a glimpse at the annals surrounding the note shows they are easily wrong. As church-state scholar Pfeffer points out, Jefferson apparently glimpsed the note as an opening to make a foremost statement on place of worship and state. Before dispatching the missive, Jefferson had it reconsidered by Levi Lincoln, his advocate general. Jefferson told Lincoln he examined the answer as a way of "sowing helpful realities and values among the persons, which ...