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How Christian Were the Founders?
An excellent (and somewhat frightening) article about the influence that Texas has on the textbook market ... and the influence that fundamentalist Christians have on Texas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html
These quotes are mostly for my own use; I wanted to save them somewhere:
Benjamin Franklin:
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
President John Adams:
"Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion."
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
President Thomas Jefferson:
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions. . . . I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrine."
President James Madison ("Father of the Constitution" and principal author of the First Amendment):
"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant violation."
"Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States. . . ."
"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 in blood for centuries."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html
These quotes are mostly for my own use; I wanted to save them somewhere:
Benjamin Franklin:
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
President John Adams:
"Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion."
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
President Thomas Jefferson:
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions. . . . I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrine."
President James Madison ("Father of the Constitution" and principal author of the First Amendment):
"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant violation."
"Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States. . . ."
"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 in blood for centuries."