UD,
Here's a note on Separation of church and state:
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One of the most misused phrases in American culture is "separation of church and state." We hear this all the time. We can't have a Nativity scene in the town square because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. We can't have a prayer before a football game because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The city manager of Eugene, Oregon, banned Christmas trees from public buildings, believe it or not, because they violated the constitutional separation of chruch and state -- or so he said.
Hear me on this one, people. There is NO such thing as separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution. Is nowhere to be found in the entire dobument. The First Amendment simply states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibitin the free exercise therof." It articulates a freedom of religion, not a freedom from it. The polemical history of the First Amendment grows more and more contentous.
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To better understand this document, one must understand the times. When the Constitution was written, the States had their own state religions, thus the federal government didn't want to dictate to the individual states what that would be.
Here's a note that was written in the North Carolina Constitution which gives us an example of belief and original intent:
"That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the Divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit, in the civil department within this state"
Several states, instead of requiring an office-holder to be Protestant, merely required a professed belief in God.
Basically the founding fathers were careful NOT to step on this right of the states to choose their own religion.
Basically instead of a Separation of Church and State, their is a clear PROTECTION of religious expression outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
Thus any Supreme court ruling regarding local school matters, like having prayers at ball games, are a violation of the very Constitution they swear to uphold.
The issue of how we got here is summed up in "Legal Precedence"
Basically we are getting further and further from the original intent of the Constitution and thus placing court rulings at a higher value.
What we see is through time the original intent has been distorted to the point that today, many people no longer understand the purpose this was written.
We are a nation that is free to express our faith or express our non-faith. To impose one's non-faith is UnConstitutional.
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