Separation of Church and State is a myth.
Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other founding documents is there a mention of the so-called separation of Church and state.
The phrase first appeared in a letter written to the Danbury Baptists by Thomas Jefferson. In the letter, Jefferson referred to a “…wall of separation between the Church and the state”.
Taken within context, this “Wall of Separation” was meant to protect the Church from the state.
Let me state that one again.
Thomas Jefferson believed that the state was the biggest threat to religion, and as he was addressing the concerns of the Danbury Baptists, who were fearful that the newly formed government might just go trampling on religious freedoms and taking faith out of every day life, he assured them that the “Wall of Separation” would protect the Church from precisely this sort of encroachment.
Even the Supreme Court (in 1908, and elsewhere) declared that we are indeed “…a Christian Nation”, based on Christian principles.
It was only in the 1947 Supreme Court case, Everson v. Board of Education, that the Justices of the highest court in the land went radically beyond their bounds and out of original context to establish the mess we have today. In the decision, the phrase “Separation of Church and state” was first used in the sense we now recognize it today, as a means of protecting the state from the Church.
So, prior to 1947, the state was the enemy. Since 1947, the Church is the enemy. And now we want to take God out of our pledge, out of our money, and even out of Christmas.
This mis-use of the separation of Church and state is so widespread that the average American doesn’t even know that it never even appears in a Founding Document.
Call me a traditionalist, but I still think the state is the enemy – not the Church.