Thomas Jefferson: “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 and State.”
James Madison: “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.”
Theodore Roosevelt: “I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed.”
Barry Goldwater: “By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars.”
George Carlin: “I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”
John Adams: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion… it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
1st Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: …”
The concept of separating church and state is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). However, Roger Williams was first in his 1636 writing of “Soul Liberty” where he coined the term.
Locke expanded on this. According to his principle of social contract, Locke argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he argued must therefore remain protected from any government authority. These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with his social contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the drafting of the United States Constitution.
On the original cover of Thomas Hobbes’s work Leviathan (1651), he discusses the concept of the social contract theory.
In the past, the wall of separation metaphor has been used to silence people speaking from a religious perspective in the public marketplace of ideas. You see this in court cases limiting the rights of students to express their faith in public school settings. You see this in public forum cases where religious groups want to use public forums on the same terms and conditions as secular groups. The courts are restricting that ability.
The tide is turning, as you see on today’s Supreme Court, where right-wing Christian religion has chipped away at the once sturdy bricks in the wall of separation between church and state, replacing those valuable bricks of integrity with bricks made of sand and one-sided religious agendas pontificated by political push.
The religious right is not so holy in its hatred of the non-white, non-straight, non-pre-existing US citizen. Those underlying deceptions now have infiltrated agendas supposedly pretending to support the very citizens they are hurting.
It took until Thomas Jefferson came to the rescue to stop the Baptist religion from being a state religion. Danbury, Connecticut was collecting taxes from people in religion and paying it to this “state religion” until all the other churches complained of this unfair practice, resulting in the common practice that all religions do not have to pay taxes now.
Religion and politics can work in a symbiotic relationship, helping humanity in homelessness, hunger, and efforts to help the general public, as long as religious bias does not interfere with the human rights of all USA citizens, not just some of them.