Religious Free Speech ~ Separation of Church and State

The Supreme Court has ruled that non-profits cannot be gagged of their free speech rights under the Constitution.  Thought it a good time to present to you the true foundation underpinning the meaning of the letter written by Thomas Jefferson in which he stated the wall is to stop government form infringing on the Church.  No mention was given to the Church being walled from Government, but quite to the contrary, as you will read in the following:

 

----- Original Message -----

From: R George Dunn

Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 9:51 PM

Subject: on Separation of Church and State

The separation of Church and State is not meant to protect us against Symbols of History or Faith.  Here is the beginning of the Preamble of the Freedom of Religion Act made by Thomas Jefferson for the State of Virginia prior to the U.S Constitutions First Amendment Creation and is held as the foundation of our First Amendment:

 

 

he act for the establishment of Religious Freedom is perhaps the most interesting feature in the revised code of Virginia. With the exception of the Declaration of Independence, it is the most celebrated of the author's productions, and the one to which he recurred with the highest pride and satisfaction. The preamble which ushers in the act designates with peculiar emphasis the premises upon which the proposition was founded. The following is the preamble with the accompanying bill as originally composed by Jefferson:

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/biog/lj12.htm

"SECTION I. Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness;..."

In the first introduction of the First Amendment by James Madison stated:  http://www.constitution.org/ac/001/r01-1/bill_of_rights_hr1789.txt

"Fourthly. That in article 1st, section 9, between clauses 3 and 4, be inserted these clauses, to wit: The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed." 

Our Constitution as adopted:   Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

The Founding Fathers used the Treasury Building in the Early days as a Church until one could be constructed.  Was that establishing religion?  No, it was the free exercise thereof.  A Judge who hangs the Ten Commandments or a picture of Socrates and the wall an establishing religion?  No, it is the freedom of his speech.

Does Mike Huckabee believe in the First Amendment?  Yes , as originally written and defined/  He has stated many times, Mike believes in the law as fundamentally enacted, to include the Creation of our Constitution.

George