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Throughout these pages I will be adding commentary to the letters and columns by other authors.  My commentary will be in [ bracketed red text ].

I would like to make a comment regarding Bill Hudson's article that appeared in the Opinion page on Friday. I would like to clarify the term "Separation of church and state'. My times we hear this term but it is not true nor is it in the Constitution of the United States.

In our Constitution as found in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights you will find the following statement, and I quote: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".

[ Mr. Wilber is partially correct. He only quotes one of the two clauses, however. The first sixteen words of the first amendment read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

And what, exactly, does this mean? The wording is vague enough that it has caused considerable controversy between the separationists (who believe that it should be interpreted broadly, and that it was intended to prohibit government from supporting or promoting religious beliefs or practices, even if that promotion favors no particular sect or religion) and the accomodationists (who believe in a narrow interpretation, and that it only prohibits the establishment of a 'State Church').

I believe that the best way to gain some clarity is to review some of the writings of the framers of the constitution, as well as other constitutional scholars of the past. To that end, I offer the following selected quotations:

Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731).

"The general government is proscribed from the interfering, in any manner whatsoever, in matters respecting religion" (James Madison, 1790, Papers, 13:16).

"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion" (John Adams, 1797, Hunter Miller, Treaties, 2:365).

"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 prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus, building a wall of separation between Church and State" (Thomas Jefferson, 1802, Andrew A. Lipscomb, Writings, 16:281).

"Governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions" (Madison, 1811, Gaillard Hunt, Writings, 8:132).

"The appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, [is] contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment'" (Madison, 1811, Writings, 8:133).

"And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state" (Madison, 1816, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1:579).

"The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State" (Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432).

"Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance" (Madison, 1822, Writings, 9:101).

"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" (Madison, undated, William and Mary Quarterly, 1946, 3:555).

"Religion ... enjoys in this country ... complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government" (Andrew Jackson, 1832, Correspondence 4:447).

"They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point" Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835, Democracy in America, 1:308).

"Perfect religious freedom [was] established in the United States, without any control exercised by the civil authority over spiritual concerns. In consequence of this, every denomination was ... without ... disadvantages arising from the connection of religion with secular policy" (Bird Wilson, 1839, Memior of the Life of the Right Reverend William White, 88).

"The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state, or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community" (James A. Garfield, 1874, Congressional Record, 2: 5384).

"Leave the matter of religion to the family, the altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate" (Ulysses S. Grant, 1875, Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom, 1967, p. 337).

Also see the following page of quotations from the writings of James Madison. ]

In other words, it means that our government cannot establish or impose any type of religion on the people of the United States.

[ This narrow view of the 1st amendment is called the 'accomodationist' position.  Whereas it is clear from the contemporaneous writings of Madison, Adams, Jefferson et. al. that the broad 'separationist' interpretation was the intent of the framers.  In fact, the House and Senate debates surrounding the first ammendment as it was being considered are enlightening, as the legislature considered and rejected several narrow wordings before finally approving the broad wording.  This shows that the legislature agreed with the separationist view. ]

This statement was misconstrued by a liberal Supreme Court in the early 1960s to mean what is now termed and believed to be by some misinformed people the separation of church and state.  Nowhere in the Constitution is it written that the church shall be separated from the state.

[ I believe that in the above quotations, I have established that the concept of 'the separation of church and state' greatly pre-dates the 1962 and 1963 supreme court cases.  The supreme court did not 'misconstrue' the clause, they reaffirmed it in its original intent and meaning ]

Furthermore, it's my opinion that we should encourage the church to be involved in politics.  I think it would add great value to political decisions and do us all a lot of good.

[ And here Mr. Wilber makes his accomodationist views clear.  Political decisions made from a religious doctrine.  Sounds like a 'state church' to me. Sorry, Mr. Wilber, this is America, not Iran, and not the Vatican. ]