Separation of Church and State II
Feb 11th, 2008 Posted in Constitution, Faith, Liberty | no comment »When the first Congress opened, it opened with prayer as Franklin had suggested. In fact, the prayer lasted for three hours. Silas Dean wrote home and stated that it was a prayer worth riding 100 miles to hear (a week’s ride). When the prayer was complete, a Bible study on Psalms 35 and Psalms 37 was conducted. Patrick Henry and George Washington were said not to have left their knees for the entire first day of that session.
In 1962, SCOTUS heard Engel v. Vitale and ruled that a simple voluntary prayer could not be a part of a student’s day. So, should I yet believe the Supreme Court of the United States in 1962 when they tell me that the Fathers didn’t want prayer in governmental institutions? Or should I believe the words of the Founding Fathers themselves? Read the rest of this entry »
For the period of history before our nation came into being, people believed that rights and freedom came from God, but that they then flowed to a king, and that the king gave these rights to the people as he saw fit. Our Founding Fathers turned this system on his head when they proposed to start a government that recognized that freedom and rights were given by God to everyone, and that people then apportioned these rights back to the government as they saw fit.