Sunday, so let’s talk a little religion as in how our Founding Fathers viewed things.
When they kicked it off back in 1776, our Founders are often praised for their foresight and wisdom on a number of far reaching issues. One of the bedrocks of their vision of a government by the people and for the people had to do with the separation of Church and State.
Having seen how England under King Henry VIII and other historical ruling dynasties had botched the whole religion and governance gig, our founders wanted to ensure complete separation of the two. They went to great lengths to ensure that our system of governance had built in protections against any group, whether religious, military, or political could ever replace democracy (click here.) It was Thomas Jefferson who coined the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state.”
And yet you hear today’s Tea partyers and evangelicals talk about America as having been founded by Christians and based on Christian values. Fact of the matter is – the majority of our founders were Deists and did not practice any organized religion (click here.)
In those parts of the world today where theocracies are the dominant powers you see much discord and unrest. Religious differences among these countries and factions aren’t the only reasons for the discord but nonetheless they do play a major role. Thank God, or whomever, that our Founding Fathers got it right when they set things up for us.