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To: Skooz
To be honest, there seems to be some disagreement on who was or was not a Deist, but the point doesn't interest me. The point that interests me is that these men (Deists or otherwise in their personal life) clearly believed in separation of church and state, and two of them (Jefferson and Madison) were primarily responsible for the First Amendment itself.
14 posted on 09/05/2003 3:46:50 PM PDT by kesg
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To: kesg
The point that interests me is that these men (Deists or otherwise in their personal life) clearly believed in separation of church and state,

You have no historical basis for that assertion. The "separation of church and state," as we know it, was discovered by the Warren Court in 1962. It is nowhere in the Constitution or any other founding document.

15 posted on 09/05/2003 4:51:41 PM PDT by Skooz (All Hail the Mighty Kansas City Chiefs)
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To: kesg
Neither Jefferson, who was in France, nor Madison authored the First Amendment, Fisher Ames did. His state at the time of it's ratiifcation had a state establisehed religion.

Likewise, Jefferson did not construct a "wall of separation", Justice Hugo Black did that in Everson in 1946. In fact Jefferson and Madison authored a law, while members of the Virginia Legislature, proscribing penalties for breaking the Sabbath. Jefferson, as POTUS, used the public treasury to build Catholic missions for the Indians and man them with the word of God, the Bible.

And that's the rest of the story.

20 posted on 09/05/2003 5:02:35 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: kesg
B.S. ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!
28 posted on 09/05/2003 5:13:41 PM PDT by lawdog
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