The Founding Fathers: Separation of Church and State

President James Madison

For those who believe America was founded on Christian principles, that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the Founding Fathers were all God-fearing Christians, the collection of quotes below seem to indicate quite the contrary.  The Founding Fathers it seems were well aware of the dangers posed by religion, and why religion has no place in politics and has to be distinctly separate from the creation of laws in this country. 

 - For any Church or Religion to think they can dictate the rights of marriage, abortion, contraception, etc. - they are sorely Wrong. 

OUR GREAT FOUNDERS:

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”

  -- President James Madison
 

“Let us with caution induIge the supposition that moraIity can be maintained without reIigion."

Pres. Thomas Jefferson

 -- President Washington
 

"History furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."

 -- President Thomas Jefferson 1813
 

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation and made them the most bIoody reIigion that ever existed?"

 -- President John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816
 

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

 -- President Jefferson
 

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution on the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both there (England) and in New England."

 -- Benjamin Franklin