The Baptists who fled the theocracy of the Pilgrims, who wanted freedom to worship for themselves but would not extend it to others, worked their way down from Rhode’s Island into Graves End in Brooklyn, down into the wilds of New Jersey, believed strongly in the separation of church and state. In 1702 when East and West Jersey combined to make our garden state, freedom of religion was shrined in our Constitution.
The Founders of our Nation remembered the religious wars that almost destroyed Europe, where Catholic and a dozen varieties of Protestants were killing each other because each believed they owned God. The Christian Nationalist movement not only is a denial of our heritage as Americans, it is an abomination.
The Founders had many different kinds of faith, some of which were not considered Christian in the traditional sense. The writers of the Constitution which includes the Bill of Rights makes it clear that there was to be no establishment of religion, something that the so-called “originalists” on the Supreme Court seem to have forgotten.
Prayer for the Day
Lift the scales of blindness from our eyes, O God,
And the limits of intolerance from our hearts;
Help us be faithful servants responding to your word,
For we are ordinary people sometimes afraid to take risks.
Break down the chains of caution that bind us,
And move us boldly into a future we cannot fully envision.
In the name of the One who points the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen
Thoughts for the Day
…ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects [that end in failure.
- James Madison, signer of the Declaration of Independence
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & State.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association
Wisdom reaches from one end of the earth to another and orders all things well.
Wisdom 8: 1