The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders

So you've had your fill of uninformed, opinionated people telling you all about what the founders believed! Pick up this book and enjoy the read. Most of the fundamentalists would never be happy had the separation of church and state not been enshrined by the founding fathers: states taxed their citizens to pay the wages of Episcopal church clergy, and frequently arrested Baptists for disturbing the general population. The Episcopal church was the old Church of England, renamed following the revolution, and therefore the state religion. Not exactly the "religious paradise" the would-be advocates of an American theocracy paint this country's early formation! If you want to read a good book to counter the religious right, this is a good place to start. If you are a member of the religious right ... you probably didn't believe Jefferson either, so why start believing Church.

Forrest Church, a Unitarian minister and historian, has pulled together a nice sampling of letters, documents, and legal briefs from the early days of the United States of America (both pre- and post-Constitution) that lays out how most of our founding generations felt about the separation of church and state--they were very much opposed to religion mixing with government and politics. Mr. Church has presented the material in chronological order, and he introduces each piece to highlight its contextual setting and importance. These are more than just the familiar quotes, these pieces in their whole so that the complete context of what is said is there for the examination. Included are number chapters on some the most recognizable figures important in the separation of church and state debate, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, Patrick Henry and James Madison; but, what makes this book more useful are the lesser known public and religious leaders included: Isaac Backus, Caleb Wallace, and George Mason among others. The separation of church and state was a hot topic open for much debate in our founding days. Most of the original colonies prior to and into the Revolution, had laws on the books that sanctioned a state religion, usually the Anglican Church, and collected taxes that paid the clergy. As King George's yoke was being thrown off during the Revolution, our fledgling country debated itself on the meaning of freedom and liberty, and religious freedom was of utmost importance for our founders. What makes this book important is that instead of being a thick volume of every conceivable reference to our freedom of and from religion that only an historian would glance at, this book is of the perfect size and length that a layperson can read it and learn for his or herself how important it is that we keep government out of religion and more importantly that we keep religion out of government. >>>>>>><<<<<<< <br /> <br />A Guide to my Book Rating System: <br /> <br />1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. <br />2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. <br />3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. <br />4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. <br />5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

Mr. Church serves more as editor of source materials in the time of our nation's founding; the bulk of this book is dedicated to presenting the founding fathers' and framers' opinions regarding the eventually established American ideal regarding religious freedom, with very little context added by Mr. Church. His short analyses though are spot-on. Mr. Church's book presents, in their own words, essays and letters from: Patrick Henry (an enemy of religious freedom and some of our founding ideals), Sam Adams, George Mason, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and others. It also includes the Treaty of Tripoli initiated by Washington's administration but ratified by Adams after being unanimously ratified by the 5th Congress which expressly defines the U.S. as "not being in any sense founded on the Christian religion". The preponderance of evidence collected in this book strongly favors the fact that our framers (not neccesarily our founders like Henry), were enlightened gentleman suspicious of organized religion, but respectful of humanaity's need for faith, and that a relationship between religion and government led to corruption of religion and the derprivation of freedom to citizens and thus the need to separate the two institutions as much as possible. Being an avid student on this topic, I can state unequivocably that Mr. Church's assessment is accurate relative to the framers' historic desire to secularize government. Mr. Church even presents Madison's post-Presidential memorandum on his admitted hypocrisy regarding his re-establishing national days of prayer during the build-up to the War of 1812 and the fear that elicited. The book is light in available source material regarding the majority of our leading framer's express desire to seperate church and state in hopes that religion would evolve to a faith in line with scientific fact that believed in a God of universal grace rather than the God described by fundamentalist Christians (then called Trinitarians) and that disestablishing religion was considered necessary in order that Citizens had the "freedom of conscience" to evolve to a more unitarian, if not deistic, faith already shared by our enlightened founders. It is surprising Mr. Church doesn't explore this more fully given that he is a long-time Unitarian Minister with a Ph.D. in Early Church history and editor of "Thomas Jefferson's Bible", suggesting he's completely up to the task. This is an excellent book to own and I highly recommend it because of its wealth of source data, all in a tiny book, 157 pages in a small footprint. It however is assuredly NOT the definitive book on the relationship between church and state due to its limited scope and incompleteness of source material (.e.g, it's missing Madison vetoing faith-based charities as President along with the failed efforts to extend constitutional power to the gov't through a particular sect's version of God v. gov't deriving power di