Separation of Church and State Discussions

Original Prompt:
What does the separation of church and state really mean? Why did our forefathers feel this was such an important concept? This website may have some answers for this option http://www.au.org/ (Links to an external site.)

My Response:

Well I will preface this by saying that I agree with the Constitution's statements on the topic of religion. But it is important to note that "the separation of church and state" is NOT in our constitution. Quoting from the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". That is IT. That is all the Constitution says to the matter. Is that restricting the Government or Religion? It seems to me that the statements are mainly separating the Government OUT of religion. How can the values of the people and the Government of those people be truly mutually exclusive? Maybe that is the tricky thing of our day. So many different value systems bringing conflict. Even the website prescribed for us, www.au.org (Links to an external site.) seemed hostile or condescending toward religion in many cases. The statement "separation of church and state" was in a personal letter by Thomas Jefferson helping him to further describe his ideas of the "importance of limited government to prevent its interference with religious activities"1. This statement was outrageously taken out of context from there on out. To say that our forefathers thought this was an important concept may be stretching it a bit, for most of the founding fathers may very well have never heard the statement. That is not to say that the concept of religious liberty was important to them. It obviously was. And they carefully crafted the Constitution to accommodate the incredibly diverse United States of today. We should all be thankful that the values of our founding fathers resounded to the sound of liberty and freedom and equality due to their Christianity. In many religions, the value system differs so greatly that we could not have hoped to have such a long-lasting form of protection for our liberties. 

1 A well-cited article (Links to an external site.) which goes further into the fact that "the separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution and the implications of that fact for religious freedom

Responses to Others:

(1) I agree Kody that merging the two would bring many of the same tyrannies that England had at the time. If you read the Declaration of Independence though, the tyrannies were much more all-encompassing than religion. The King was basically being a dictator to the States, in addition to ruling tyrannically in many ways in England, not in the least by instituting a Church of England, the Anglican/Episcopalian Church, and requiring compulsory adherence to its dictates and the giving of money to the Church. 

(2) Hi Tami, I see that you said the church of England was Catholic. Actually the Church of England was the Anglican Church, which is Protestant. In our book it actually talks about how many Catholics were sadly persecuted in the revolution time. However, Catholic France was our ally. Interesting. I tend to agree with Taylor here that what they were wanting to escape was the government's tyrannical hand in their religion. They were forced to pay huge tithes to the government run Church. And they had to worship in the way of the Anglican church, which is according to this site

 (Links to an external site.) the same as the current Episcopal church. Imagine if the diversity of even America's Christian Protestant churches were pressed into the window of the Episcopalian practices. Of course they would want freedom from that.