Is America a Christian Nation?
Pledges, Prayers and the Ten Commandments
Charitable Choice/Faith-based Funding

Religious political activists, eager to receive taxpayer money to subsidize their parochial schools, churches and charitable missions, are attempting to prove that the First Amendment’s religion clause allows the state to support religious activity. In order to reinterpret the First Amendment’s intent, these activists make use of selective, inaccurate or even fabricated history.

Thomas Jefferson was making a public statement of principle when he defined the First Amendment’s purpose as that of building a “wall of separation between church and state.” Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom further confirms he viewed church/state separation as the essence of the First Amendment.

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

–The First Amendment

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 in blood for centuries.

– James Madison

The religious political activists claim that Jefferson later said that his wall of separation between church and state was meant to be one-directional—to protect churches from government interference but not to prohibit churches from co-opting government influence. This false assertion is contrary to the entire body of Jefferson’s writing on church/state relations. In fact, the impetus behind the First Amendment was the desire to prevent a recurrence of the religious persecution carried out in the colonies by politically powerful state churches.

Religious political activists argue that the First Amendment’s only purpose was to prevent the establishment of a state church. If this were so, why did its authors reject wording to that effect and instead choose its much more far-reaching language?

Church/state separation does not discourage private religious beliefs and institutions; it simply ensures that all citizens—especially those of minority faiths—are free to practice their religious beliefs. It also ensures that no citizen is coerced, through taxes or otherwise, to support or participate in religious activities with which he may disagree.