The War On Secularists

PART ONE
"Are secularists illiterate or just liars?"

I suppose if we are going to discuss the current secular war on Christianity we should go back to the root... the oft misquoted and misinterpreted Establishment Clause and the ignored Free Exercise Clause.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It pretty much speaks for itself. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." There is no need for interpretation, we know why this was included, it was to prevent an official state sponsored religion as was the case in England, with the eponymously named Church of England. Nothing about religious symbolism or removing God from the public square. Nothing. Those interpretations come much later in our nations history to be discussed in part two.

Kudos good men, kudos...mission accomplished. Although a numerically overwhelming Christian nation your words actions and sacrifice have enabled us to be the most religiously tolerant nation to ever face God's Green Earth.

But Thomas Jefferson wrote about the separation of church and state in a letter to the Danbury Baptists the secularists cry. Why yes, yes he did, and for good reason. Jefferson wrote many letters, in fact he was a frequent contributor under various pseudonyms to the original Aurora and a notorious gossipmonger. He would write in proclaiming that John Adam's wife was a whore among other salacious details about his opponents. Im not exactly sure how personal correspondence became legal precedent, but we will tackle that as well in part two.

I have had this discussion as nauseum and very few, present company excluded, have any idea why he wrote it. The background is worth noting and its worth knowing if one is to understand it.

The Baptists were in fact being persecuted, as they had been since arriving on these shores. They felt they were being unduly taxed by the State of Connecticut compared to the State of Conn. "sponsored" religion, the Congregationalists. More importantly they feared that the Constitution as written did not not guarantee their right to pursue their religious freedoms.

"Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, [and] that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of government is not specific. . . . [T]herefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights."

Their grievance was real and Jefferson responded and reassured them that the intent of the First Amendment in fact did give them an inalienable right to practice their faith without Government interference. In doing so he used the vernacular of one of the earlier colonial Baptists and noted theologian Roger Williams, who by some accounts popularized the phrase one hundred years earlier.

"Gentlemen,-The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association give me the highest satisfaction. . . . Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, 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. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem."

In others words what he meant is nowhere near what the secularists of today suggest he did. If anything the Jefferson letter set a precedent for preferential treatment of organized religion and the free exercise thereof, certainly in regards to taxation.

The point was to remove State from Religion, not Religion from State. That much was clear at the time, and continued to be for the next one hundred and forty years before the commies got their hands on it.

PART TWO
"How the commies manipulated Jefferson's words to advance their secular anti-American agenda, and how the KKK helped them."

to be continued....