Quote:
Originally Posted by emm74
I'm glad you are right up front about saying that Trump will violate the First Amendment! That is "the law" Trump would have to repeal to get rid of the separation of church and state. Funny how righties think the Constitution begins and ends with the Second Amendment.
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Funny how the author of the post above ^^^^^ has no idea what he/she is talking about. Not a clue. The term 'separation of church and state' appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, nor in the debates leading up to ratification. That notion of a wall of separation comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson sent to the Danbury Baptists Association in Danbury, CT. The text of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or abridging the free exercise thereof". This forbids an official establishment of religion, which is very different from the much looser, imprecise term 'separation of church and state'. The text of the Constitution only forbids government sponsorship and compulsion of religious exercise by individuals. It does not require separation of religion and religious persons from public affairs of state.
The notion of 'separation of church and state' is codified into U.S. law via a series of SCOTUS decisions over a 114 year period, but that didn't start until the Reynolds vs. United States decision in 1879, nine decades after the U.S. Constitution was ratified.