They did not keep God out of Government. Only the current Democrats are doing that.
2006-11-10 07:48:24 · 22 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
Separate but not exclude...that's what I was going for...
2006-11-10 08:11:22 · update #1
The Founders did not intend a complete "separation of church and state."
Their concern was the state actively promoting or supporting one religion over the other. There is nothing close to this in the USA.
The ACLU and other groups, thru mountains of unnecessary litigation, have completely misread the Establish Clause of the First Amendment. The mere mention of "God" for example, hardly favors one religion over the other.
Jefferson's phrase "separation of Church and State" was written to a group of Baptists to assure them that they would be free to practice as they wished. It appears no where in the Constitution.
Today, however, this pseudo legal doctrine has been used as a sword to destroy even the most benign religious expression on public property. We are much poorer for it.
2006-11-10 08:03:33 · answer #1 · answered by C = JD 5 · 5⤊ 3⤋
IF people READ the Constitution, at NO time will you see the phrase "separation of church and state".
The First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
The money thing came WELL after our Founding Fathers and the Constitution... Current currency "greenbacks" were developed following the Civil War.
However you ARE correct: that the Founding Fathers were NOT intending an atheistic society. They were seeking to form a country with a national government that was NOT beholden to a specific Church, as England or France were at the time.
2006-11-10 16:06:05 · answer #2 · answered by mariner31 7 · 5⤊ 1⤋
The founding fathers did not want a separation of church and state as everyone interprets today. They simply didn't want a national religion like the Church of England in which the king was the head. The founding fathers were mostly Deists, a popular belief at the time. Deists believed any reasonable person would conclude that God exist simply by observing the world around them.
2006-11-10 16:01:24 · answer #3 · answered by Overt Operative 6 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Our founders were all men who beleived in God but what they wanted was for the government not to impose its sense of religion upon them. The way for this to be done was to separate church and state. But separate does not mean exclude and the depths to which this part of the constitution has been deconstructed are appalling.
The current Democrats are not keeping God out of the government, it is the Republican Right that is doing so by pushing so hard to get God into the government.
2006-11-10 15:53:04 · answer #4 · answered by Joe M 2 · 4⤊ 1⤋
In God we Trust has been part of America since we created the US Government Seal. It has been with us since the begining.
Our founders did not want a federaly imposed state religion that compels belief. If the Supreme Court opens every session with a prayer, then it is reasonable to have crosses on government property.
People that say that "IGWT" is a modern development need to do their history. "IGWT" comes from the US seal, which was created as a two-sided seal in the 18th century. Roosevelt made the decision to print both parts of the seal on the 1 dollar after ww2.
Research the seal and you will learn more about "IGWT".
2006-11-10 16:22:23 · answer #5 · answered by lundstroms2004 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The founding fathers wanted religion to be separate from state affairs. You could check out any history book.
"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" (Madison, Annals of Congress, 1789).
They were Christians and remember at first there was no U.S. currency. In god we trust is permissible because it relates to all religions, not just the christian one. Something that I see with many social cons who want to inject christianity in everything.
2006-11-10 18:12:20 · answer #6 · answered by cynical 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The idea of a separation of church and state comes from a supreme court ruling.
The founding fathers were all religious, with most people coming here for freedom of religion.
No where in the constitution does it say "separation of church and state", it says people are free to observe their religion and that there will be no state religion. It does not say or implicate that the state will not recognize religion.
2006-11-10 16:09:13 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
You exhibit a profound misunderstanding of what the founders wanted. Most were deists, and they joined with religious minorities when writing the constitution to keep the government out of religion, thus protecting the religious minority from the majority. They designed the government to be neutral towards religion.
The phrase "separation of church and state" was used extensively by the founders;
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries"
James Madison - Father of the Constitution
2006-11-10 16:03:29 · answer #8 · answered by notme 5 · 2⤊ 2⤋
The Founding Fathers didn't want total separation, they wanted to outlaw the government establishing a specific religion as the national religion.
2006-11-10 15:52:14 · answer #9 · answered by togashiyokuni2001 6 · 9⤊ 0⤋
Because there wasn't room on it to put "all others pay cash" Actually "in God we trust is a fairly recent development in our currency. Even repuglicans should feel that religion has no place in government also. A persons beliefs should be their own and not forced upon them by government.
2006-11-10 16:07:43 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋