Pastor Louie Giglio - Inauguration Prayer?

[AppGrad1]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/ ... ation.html

Are pastors now only supposed to pray/preach things that will not anger others? I thought they were supposed to preach what is in the Bible?
What makes the Obama Admin think he would have brought this up in his prayer?
Thoughts?

[alabamapitts]

I heard that he withdrew because he wasn't fat enough to represent.

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/ ... ation.html

Are pastors now only supposed to pray/preach things that will not anger others? I thought they were supposed to preach what is in the Bible?
What makes the Obama Admin think he would have brought this up in his prayer?
Thoughts?

Not really addressing your point, but I was thinking of the below-


I have always wondered why don't preachers ever bring up the Year of Jubilee, that is also in Leviticus.

And a lot of things seem to put the Lord in a less than happy mood, but we only seem to pick and choose a few things such a homosexuality. Have I missed something in the Bible that mentions ignoring so much except the homosexuality stuff. My gut tells me that the picking and choosing certain aspects of the Bible may not sit all that well with YHWH, but whom am I to say.

Edit: Some spelling errors.

[appbio91]

This is not so unusual. More and more (like it or not) main stream society is accepting of same sex relationships. The Obama administration has made their stance clear and probably see this as a principled stance. I doubt this would have come up and most people would never have known about 20 year old statements. You can bet someone in the LGBT community would have sniffed it out and made hay out of it.

Agree with other poster about picking and choosing parts of the Bible to support hating certain groups. You could just as easily decide that based on the Bible you would hate divorced people.

[AppGrad1]

This is not so unusual. More and more (like it or not) main stream society is accepting of same sex relationships. The Obama administration has made their stance clear and probably see this as a principled stance. I doubt this would have come up and most people would never have known about 20 year old statements. You can bet someone in the LGBT community would have sniffed it out and made hay out of it.

Agree with other poster about picking and choosing parts of the Bible to support hating certain groups. You could just as easily decide that based on the Bible you would hate divorced people.

Agree with you to a point but I think the proper response is hating the sin, not hating groups or individuals.

[newtoasu]

Agree with other poster about picking and choosing parts of the Bible to support hating certain groups. You could just as easily decide that based on the Bible you would hate divorced people.

Watch this:

If you take the Bible literally, eating NC BBQ would be banned and y'all would be eating the REAL BBQ: beef brisket, like we do in Texas!

Made it to Q in just 6 posts! Maybe not a record, but pretty close! (Of course I have been known to eat and downright enjoy the NC Q, particularly a Woodlands sandwich with slaw on game days at KBS!)

[appbio91]

This is not so unusual. More and more (like it or not) main stream society is accepting of same sex relationships. The Obama administration has made their stance clear and probably see this as a principled stance. I doubt this would have come up and most people would never have known about 20 year old statements. You can bet someone in the LGBT community would have sniffed it out and made hay out of it.

Agree with other poster about picking and choosing parts of the Bible to support hating certain groups. You could just as easily decide that based on the Bible you would hate divorced people.

Agree with you to a point but I think the proper response is hating the sin, not hating groups or individuals.

In theory that is right. In reality I see otherwise....

[TheGreatBolo]

Not supposed to hate the person, but that doesn't mean their actions should be tolerated. Some of my actions shouldn't be tolerated either.

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Not supposed to hate the person, but that doesn't mean their actions should be tolerated. Some of my actions shouldn't be tolerated either.

Actually living in a secular society that has some level of separation of church and state, maybe it would be best it you would tolerate their actions and let others live their life as they choose.

[Kgfish]

I find the whole notion that separation of Church and State somehow means a complete absence of religion in all matters pertaining to government laughable. It is a view that completely distorts the opinion of the Founders. The Founders clear intent was that government cannot pass laws that have a primary purpose to advance religion. Liberals would have you believe separation of church and state means the segregation of religion from politics.

The building housing the Supreme Court has Moses holding the Ten Commandments on center facade of the entrance. The same Ten Commandments are engraved on to each door as you enter the chamber and on the wall above where the Judges is another display of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Bible verses are etched on almost every Federal Building and national monument in Washington. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said, "We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God." Fifty two of the Fifty Five Founders of the Constitution were members of established Orthodox churches. Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a pastor who's salary has been paid by the taxpayers since 1777.

Yet liberals would have us believe this nation was not founded on the principles of the Bible and God. They would also have us believe The Constitution that has served this nation for the past 220 years is now out of date and many of its laws unconstitutional. Liberal judges are now ignoring precedent and law while they legislate from the bench. Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of Interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy: the rule of few over many. It appears he was right o the money.

[1ASU78]

I find the whole notion that separation of Church and State somehow means a complete absence of religion in all matters pertaining to government laughable. It is a view that completely distorts the opinion of the Founders. The Founders clear intent was that government cannot pass laws that have a primary purpose to advance religion. Liberals would have you believe separation of church and state means the segregation of religion from politics.

The building housing the Supreme Court has Moses holding the Ten Commandments on center facade of the entrance. The same Ten Commandments are engraved on to each door as you enter the chamber and on the wall above where the Judges is another display of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Bible verses are etched on almost every Federal Building and national monument in Washington. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said, "We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God." Fifty two of the Fifty Five Founders of the Constitution were members of established Orthodox churches. Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a pastor who's salary has been paid by the taxpayers since 1777.

Yet liberals would have us believe this nation was not founded on the principles of the Bible and God. They would also have us believe The Constitution that has served this nation for the past 220 years is now out of date and many of its laws unconstitutional. Liberal judges are now ignoring precedent and law while they legislate from the bench. Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of Interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy: the rule of few over many. It appears he was right o the money.

Very well said.

[Watauga72]

I find the whole notion that separation of Church and State somehow means a complete absence of religion in all matters pertaining to government laughable. It is a view that completely distorts the opinion of the Founders. The Founders clear intent was that government cannot pass laws that have a primary purpose to advance religion. Liberals would have you believe separation of church and state means the segregation of religion from politics.

The building housing the Supreme Court has Moses holding the Ten Commandments on center facade of the entrance. The same Ten Commandments are engraved on to each door as you enter the chamber and on the wall above where the Judges is another display of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Bible verses are etched on almost every Federal Building and national monument in Washington. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said, "We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God." Fifty two of the Fifty Five Founders of the Constitution were members of established Orthodox churches. Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a pastor who's salary has been paid by the taxpayers since 1777.

Yet liberals would have us believe this nation was not founded on the principles of the Bible and God. They would also have us believe The Constitution that has served this nation for the past 220 years is now out of date and many of its laws unconstitutional. Liberal judges are now ignoring precedent and law while they legislate from the bench. Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of Interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy: the rule of few over many. It appears he was right o the money.

Which parts of the constitution are you saying liberals believe are "unconstitutional"? And is that, by definition, not impossible?

Since this topic began with an op-ed piece basically railing against the "gay & lesbian agenda", one could argue that the 14th amendment (actually part of the constitution) could be extended to guarantee gays & lesbians the same legal rights as all other citizens. This does not mean that any religious group must sanction gay marriage, only that the state should not prevent some citizens from receiving the same protections as all others.

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Watauga72,
You pretty much summed up my point in a very shot post. Thank you, and I will try and refrain from posting more on this.

[Watauga72]

Watauga72,
You pretty much summed up my point in a very shot post. Thank you, and I will try and refrain from posting more on this.

This is an emotion-laden area and these discussions generally end in no good. Think i'll join you on the sidelines.

[appst89]

I find the whole notion that separation of Church and State somehow means a complete absence of religion in all matters pertaining to government laughable. It is a view that completely distorts the opinion of the Founders. The Founders clear intent was that government cannot pass laws that have a primary purpose to advance religion. Liberals would have you believe separation of church and state means the segregation of religion from politics.

The building housing the Supreme Court has Moses holding the Ten Commandments on center facade of the entrance. The same Ten Commandments are engraved on to each door as you enter the chamber and on the wall above where the Judges is another display of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Bible verses are etched on almost every Federal Building and national monument in Washington. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said, "We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God." Fifty two of the Fifty Five Founders of the Constitution were members of established Orthodox churches. Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a pastor who's salary has been paid by the taxpayers since 1777.

Yet liberals would have us believe this nation was not founded on the principles of the Bible and God. They would also have us believe The Constitution that has served this nation for the past 220 years is now out of date and many of its laws unconstitutional. Liberal judges are now ignoring precedent and law while they legislate from the bench. Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of Interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy: the rule of few over many. It appears he was right o the money.

There are numerous quotes by the Founding Fathers themselves that illustrate that they did indeed envison a complete separation of Church and State. There is no doubt many of them were men of faith, but most were Deists. Below are several quotes from various founding fathers. They show pretty clearly, I think, that they had no intention of having the government involved in any way in the manner in which free men chose to practice, or not practice religion.

.. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 358.)

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, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 48.)

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371)

Chaplainships of both Congress and the armed services were established sixteen years before the First Amendment was adopted. It would have been fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of the amendment had been threshed out in weightier matters. But Madison did foresee the danger that minor deviations from the constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents. He took care of one of them by his veto [in 1811] of the appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his "Essay on Monopolies," unpublished until 1946. Here is what he wrote: "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?" The appointments, he said, were also a palpable violation of equal rights. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? "To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor." The problem, said the author of the First Amendment, was how to prevent "this step beyond the landmarks of power [from having] the effect of a legitimate precedent." Rather than let that happen, it would "be better to apply to it the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law takes no account of trifles]." Or, he said (likewise in Latin), class it with faults that result from carelessness or that human nature could scarcely avoid." "Better also," he went on, "to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of religion." ... The deviations from constitutional principles went further: "Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed. Altho' recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers." (Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424. Brant gives the source of "Essay on Monopolies" as Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-562.

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, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822; published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by Saul K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953.)

The only ultimate protection for religious liberty in a country like ours, Madison pointed out--echoing Jefferson;--is public opinion: a firm and pervading opinion that the First Amendment works. "Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance." (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 56. Madison's words, according to Gaustad, are from his letter of 10 July 1822 to Edward Livingston.)

At age eighty-one [therefore, in 1832?], both looking back at the American experience and looking forward with vision sharpened by practical experience, Madison summed up his views of church and state relations in a letter to a "Reverend Adams": "I must admit moreover that 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 of a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded by an entire abstinence of the Government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect against trespass on its legal rights by others." (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad, 1987, p. 39.)

Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it is certainly the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others. (George Washington, letter to the Religious Society called the Quakers, September 28, 1789. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 500.)

In the Enlightened Age and in this Land of equal Liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. (George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793. Quoted in Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 269.)

As President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he was friendly in his attitude toward Christian values. However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary.... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative. George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian. In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout Deist--just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected. (Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 174-175.)

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" [1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258.)

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, letter to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 234.)

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, 1706-1790, American statesman, diplomat, scientist, and printer, from a letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.)

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other business government has to do therewith. (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending Conflict," in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72.)

That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience. (Patrick Henry, 1736-1799, American patriot and statesman, Virginia Bill of Rights, June 12, 1776. From Daniel B. Baker, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1990, p. 189.)

For the civil authority to pretend to establish particular modes of faith and forms of worship, and to punish all that deviate from the standards which our superiors have set up, is attended with the most pernicious consequences to society. It cramps all free and rational inquiry, fills the world with hypocrites and superstitious bigots--nay, with infidels and skeptics; it exposes men of religion and conscience to the rage and malice of fiery, blind zealots, and dissolves every tender tie of human nature. And I cannot but look upon it as a peculiar blessing of Heaven that we live in a land where everyone can freely deliver his sentiments upon religious subjects, and have the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without any molestation or disturbance--a privilege which I hope we shall ever keep up and strenuously maintain. (Samuel West, Dartmouth, MA, Election Sermon, 1776, as quoted by Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 103.)

Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of the mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear--maintain the principles that he believes--worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government. (John Leland, "The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, and Therefore Religious Opinions not Cognizable by Law" [a pamphlet], New London, Connecticut, 1791. Reprinted in Mortimer Adler, ed., 1784-1796, Organizing the New Nation: The Annals of America, Vol. 3, Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, pp. 447-448. Leland was a Baptist minister who refused to support the Constitution until Madison persuaded him that the Constitution would not undermine religious liberty.)

Twelve centuries of moral and political darkness, in which Europe was involved, had nearly completed the destruction of human dignity, and every thing valuable or ornamental in the character of man. During this long and doleful night of ignorance, slavery, and superstition, Christianity reigned triumphant; its doctrines and divinity were not called in question. The power of the Pope, the Clergy, and the Church were omnipotent; nothing could restrain their frenzy, nothing could control the cruelty of their fanaticism; with mad enthusiasm they set on foot the most bloody and terrific crusades, the object of which was to recover the Holy Land. Seven hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the two first expeditions, which had been thus commenced and carried on by the pious zeal of the Christian church, and in the total amount, several millions were found numbered with the dead: the awful effects of religious fanaticism presuming upon the aid of heaven. It was then that man lost all his dignity, and sunk to the condition of a brute; it was then that intellect received a deadly blow, from which it did not recover until the fifteenth century. From that time to the present, the progress of knowledge has been constantly accelerated; independence of mind has been asserted, and opposing obstacles have been gradually diminished. The church has resigned a part of her power, the better to retain the remainder; civil tyranny has been shaken to its centre in both hemispheres; the malignity of superstition is abating, and every species of quackery, imposture, and imposition, are yielding to the light and power of science. An awful contest has commenced, which must terminate in the destruction of thrones and civil despotism; in the annihilation of ecclesiastical pride and domination.... Church and State may unite to form an insurmountable barrier against the extension of thought, the moral progress of nations, and the felicity of nature; but let it be recollected, that the guarantee for moral and political emancipation is already deposited in the archives of every school and college, and in the mind of every cultivated and enlightened man of all countries. It will henceforth be a vain and fruitless attempt to reduce the earth to that state of slavery of which the history of former ages has furnished such an awful picture. The crimes of ecclesiastical despots are still corroding upon the very vitals of human society; the severities of civil power will never be forgotten. (Elihu Palmer, Principles of Nature; or, a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species, 3rd ed., 1806; as reprinted in Kerry S. Walters, Elihu Palmer's 'Principles of Nature': Text and Commentary, Wolfeboro, N. H.: Longwood Academic, 1990, pp. 82-83. )

[alabamapitts]

I thought the Founding Fathers were all Southern Baptist ministers.

[TheGreatBolo]

Some things might should be tolerated outwardly, to keep the peace, but not tolerated in the heart.

[alabamapitts]

You're right. I tolerate Louie Gigilo to keep the peace, but not in my heart.

[Kgfish]

"They show pretty clearly, I think, that they had no intention of having the government involved in any way in the manner in which free men chose to practice, or not practice religion."

I think they also show, quite clearly, they had no intention of a government that suppresses the expression of one's religious views even while performing duties as a public servant.

[Watauga72]

Religion is a private affair, the relationship between a person and whatever god they worship. I am unaware of limitations in this country on the ability of citizens to worship in a private capacity. Public officials regularly express their belief or reliance in a higher power with no legal ramifications.