In 1791, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were written. These ten amendments are referred to as the Bill of Rights. These were designed to limit the power of Government, and ensure continued freedom and liberty for the people. The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The intention of this amendment is obvious: To make sure hat the U.S. Congress shall not make any laws with the intention of either favoring a specific religion, or discriminating against someone of another.

However, in the past century, the first amendment has been radically reinterpreted by legislative powers such as the U.S. Supreme Court, who have oppressed the new interpretation down on the American people as law. This is the way in which the first amendment has been reinterpreted: That the first amendment has in fact set up a “wall of separation” between the Church and State that extends through all forms of Government, and prohibits all levels of Government from promoting or hindering a religion/religious organization in any way at all. For example, in the case: Everson vs. Board of Education, a local taxpayer, Arch R. Everson, challenged a New Jersey law that permitted State funding for the transportation of the students of local private schools to and from schools, of which 96% were Parochial Catholic schools, under the grounds that by giving money to reimburse parents and students for the cost of transportation to and from the school, the State was giving aid to the religious organization, and in doing so was violating the New Jersey Constitution, as well as the First Amendment. Everson lost against the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, which at that time was New Jersey’s highest court, so he brought his case to the U.S. Supreme court, under federal grounds. The ACLU(American Civil Liberties Union) a far-left organization founded by Roger Baldwin in 1920, was in favor of Everson’s case. During the case, the ACLU stated that the New Jersey law that provided state reimbursement for the transportation of students to and from parochial schools, “constitutes a definite crack in the wall of separation between church and state. Such cracks have a tendency to widen beyond repair unless promptly sealed up.” This metaphor: “wall of separation” is used a lot by those who have such radical ideas on how the first amendment should be interpreted. This metaphor was used by our third President Thomas Jefferson, who used it in writing a letter to a committee of Danbury Baptists. At the time, America had just passed through the Presidential contest of 1880. The Danbury Baptists were a religious minority, and had been worried by claims made by Jefferson’s Federalist foes, who called him an atheist. The Danbury Baptists had sent a letter to President Jefferson congratulating him on his victory to the Presidency. Jefferson sent this reply: 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 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 and State. Those who support a separation of church and state that extends through all levels of government, and prohibits things as trivial as the State funding transportation of students to and from parochial catholic schools, as well as prohibits the leading of a prayer during a City Council Meeting, have adopted this metaphor to wrongly define the extent and purpose of the first amendment. One example of such behavior was displayed in Everson vs. Board of Education, in the statement made by the ACLU that I mentioned earlier. The Supreme Court made their decision in favor of Everson, and in so doing accepted the radical far-left’s false interpretation of the first amendment. The point of this article is to show that the Supreme Court has legally reinterpreted the first amendment to stand for the very thing it was meant to destroy. In a later article I will show in more detail what Jefferson’s “wall of separation” stands for. I hope that this article has helped you to better understand the dangerous myth that is the “wall of separation” between church and state.

Calvin Lyman

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