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What Do You Know About The Separation of State and Church?

 
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cyrus
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:34 pm    Post subject: What Do You Know About The Separation of State and Church? Reply with quote

Answers To: "What Do You Know About The Separation of State and Church?"
See below to get a free copy of Freethought Today.

Correct answers appear below in blue type.

Source: http://ffrf.org/quiz/ffrfanswers.php

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1. The U.S. Constitution says that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, based on the sovereign authority of God
a) in the First Amendment
b) in Section VI
c) in the Preamble
d) nowhere. Our nation was founded as a secular government, based on the authority of "We, the People," not a god, king, or dictator.

2. How many times does the word "God" appear in the U.S. Constitution?
a) 0. The U.S. Constitution is a godless document.
b) 1
c) 3
d) 6

3. How many times does the Declaration of Independence refer to Christianity or Jesus?
a) 0. There is no mention of Jesus, Christ, Christianity, religious persecution, or religious freedom in the Declaration of Independence.
b) 1
c) 3
d) 8

4. The US Constitution guarantees religious liberty for
a) Christians
b) all religions
c) atheists & agnostics
d) all of the above. Religious liberty is meaningless unless we all have it. Freedom From Religion Foundation president Anne Gaylor says, "There can be no religious freedom without the freedom to dissent."

5. Where did the separation of church and state originate?
a) France
b) Soviet Union
c) United States of America. The U.S.A. was the first nation in history to separate church and state.
d) Nazi Germany

6. What does the First Amendment say about religion?
a) nothing
b) the US is founded upon Christian principles
c) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting free exercise. The First Amendment begins with these words:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . ." The two clauses are referred to, respectively, as the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.

d) that there is no national religion, but each state may set up its own religious practices

7. The phrase "wall of separation between church and state" originated with
a) the Soviet constitution
b) a dissenting opinion by former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
c) a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson. President Thomas Jefferson coined this phrase in a carefully crafted letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut in 1802. It has since been widely picked up and invoked in major Supreme Court decisions.
d) a speech by President Ulysses S. Grant

8. Which early colonies practiced freedom of religion?
a) the Pilgrims and Puritans in Massachusetts
b) the colony in Virginia
c) Roger Williams' Providence settlement
Trick question! Roger Williams' Providence settlement founded in 1636 expressly guaranteed religious freedom. However, the Pilgrims originally were a tolerant people, when they founded Plymouth in 1620. By 1691, the Pilgrims had adopted the theocratic, intolerant Calvinism of the Puritans, who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628. The Puritans came to this land expressly to establish a bible commonwealth, and banished "heretics" and dissenters. In Virginia, heresy was a capital offense punishable by death by burning. Quakers were particularly persecuted. People who were not orthodox Christians were not legally protected, could be denied civil rights and jailed. The founders of the new nation of the United States of America, conversant with extreme religious intolerance and violence in the several colonies, were determined to put an end to it. That is why they established state/church separation.

d) all of them

9. The Puritans escaped religious persecution and, in their own colony, allowed religious freedom for
a) everyone
b) all Christians
c) Puritans only. Puritans (Congregational Calvinists) only were allowed. Even practicing Puritans were held to strict litmus tests. (The Puritans loved religious freedom so much that they kept it all to themselves.)
d) Puritans and Anglicans

10. ". . . the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; . . ."
Where does this phrase appear?

a) The U.S. Communist party platform
b) A speech by Abraham Lincoln
c) American Jewish Congress
d) U.S. treaty signed by President Adams. In 1797 the United States entered into a treaty with Tripoli, in which it was declared:
"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquillity [sic] of Musselmen . . . it is declared . . . that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." This treaty was written under Washington's presidency, and it was ratified by Congress under John Adams, signed by Adams.


11. By an Act of Congress, U.S. currency has carried the motto "In God We Trust" since
a) the very beginning
b) 1862
c) 1914
d) 1957. In 1955, Congress passed a law requiring that "In God We Trust" appear on all U.S. coins and currency. The first paper currency with the motto appeared in 1957. This was right after the McCarthy era, during the early Cold War, when no congressperson would dare be seen voting against "God." "In God We Trust" did appear occasionally on a few coins, starting with a 2-cent piece in the 1860s, in an attempt (it is surmised) to put "God" on the side of the north during the Civil War. In 1956, an Act of Congress adopted "In God We Trust" as a national motto. The original motto, "E Pluribus Unum" ("out of many, [come] one,") celebrating plurality, still appears on the Presidential Seal and on some paper currency.

12. The Pledge of Allegiance, first published in 1892, has included the words "under God" since
a) 1892
b) 1914
c) 1942
d) 1954. As with "In God We Trust," "under God" is also a Johnny-come-lately. It was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy era. The original pledge was first published on September 8, 1892 in the magazine "Youth's Companion" with no reference to a deity.

13. Who made the following statement? "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people."
a) Pat Robertson
b) Abraham Lincoln
c) Adolf Hitler. April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933.
d) Rev. Jerry Falwell

14. In 1890, bible reading was outlawed from Wisconsin schools. Who was responsible?
a) a Lutheran family
b) a Roman Catholic family. A Roman Catholic family objected to the exclusive use of the Protestant King James Version of the bible. The court barred all bible reading from Wisconsin public schools. [State ex rel. Weiss vs. District Board, 76 Wisc. 177 (1890)]. Catholicism was a small minority in 19th-century America. It is usually minority groups who need the protection of the Bill of Rights.

c) an atheist family
d) a Jewish family

15. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed student-initiated prayers at high-school football games in 2000. Who were the plaintiffs in that lawsuit?
a) Roman Catholic and Mormon families. The Texas lawsuit was taken by a Catholic family and a Mormon family who had children who were being harassed by the born-again majority in the public schools.
b) two Jewish families
c) a Unitarian (agnostic) family
d) an atheist organization

16. According to the "Lemon test," in order to be constitutional, a law or public act must:
a) have a secular purpose
b) have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion
c) not result in excessive governmental entanglement with religion
d) all of the above. The 3-pronged Lemon test (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971, which dealt with public aid to private schools) has almost consistently been utilized by the Supreme Court since the early 1970s. ALL THREE prongs of the test must be satisfied.

17. All American Presidents have been practicing Christians
a) True
b) False. John Adams, John Q. Adams, Millard Fillmore and William H. Taft were Unitarians*. Jefferson was a Deist/Freethinker. Harrison, Johnson, Grant and Hayes were not members of a church. Lincoln was a Deist. Etc. (*Although some Unitarians of that time considered themselves "Christians," they rejected the Trinity and other doctrines that most Christians today consider essential.)


18. The U.S. Constitution says there shall be no religious test for public office
a) True. Article VI:
" . . . but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

b) False

19. John Adams declared Christmas to be a national holiday
a) True
b) False. Christmas was outlawed in some colonies. December 25 was approved as a federal holiday in June 1870. (See: clerkkids.house.gov/laws/inspectLaw/inspect_TextAll.html) Notice the wording designates the date as "the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas day," so saying that "Christmas is a federal holiday" is not quite accurate as to intent. Even the name of the Act doesn't say the word "Christmas." According to From Christmas in America: A History by Penne L. Restad, (pages 104 and 96), "Louisiana was the first to declare it an official holiday. In 1837, it designated December 25 along with January 1, January 8, February 22, July 4, Sundays, and Good Friday as 'Day[s] of public rest and days of grace.' . . . Arkansas passed a similar law . . . in 1838."


20. A president, being sworn in, is required to place a hand on the Holy Bible and say "so help me, God."
a) True
b) False. The oath of office does not mention a deity or the bible:
"Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' " [U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1] This is the only oath given in the Constitution, and it is entirely secular.


21. Since the First Amendment deals with "Congress," states are free to advance religion if they wish.
a) True
b) False. The 14th Amendment makes the entire Bill of Rights applicable to the states. The first Supreme Court case to declare a state's religious practices illegal under the 14th Amendment was the McCollum case (1948) which removed religious instruction from the public schools.


Last edited by cyrus on Sat Dec 16, 2006 1:14 pm; edited 10 times in total
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AmirN



Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 297

PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cyrus Jan

Thanks for this post. I was aware of most, but not all of this information. It is a good compilation of facts on the subject.
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cyrus
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AmirN wrote:
Cyrus Jan

Thanks for this post. I was aware of most, but not all of this information. It is a good compilation of facts on the subject.


Amir Jaan, glad you find it useful.
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Cyrizian



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PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 12:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a great compilation of facts about the seperation of church and state. I am sad to say that many Christians want to force Christianity into the government. I am a Christian, but I support this seperation 100%. It is, in fact, the very reason why am so proud to be a Christian. This compilation is however missing 1 very important fact: that the very idea of freedom of choice is based on the Judeochristian tradition. More specifically, it is a matter of personal choice to be held in one's heart and not displayed in government. Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God, what is God's."

We believe in freedom of choice ...even if that choice leads one down a terrible path. Premarital sex, drugs, alcohol abuse, abortion and divorce are at an all time high in America. These are terrible things, but these people chose these paths and I must allow them to make these decisions, even if I disagree with it. This is what God did for Adam and Eve, this is what Jesus did for all the sinners, and it is what the founding fathers knew they had to do for us - for better or worse.

No, the word "God" might not appear anywhere on the Constitution or "The Declaration of Independence", but God's love is all over those documents.
Because love isn't love ...until you give it away.Wink
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Oppenheimer



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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear Cyrus, Thought you might find this of interest:

Jefferson's Quran
What the founder really thought about Islam.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007, at 3:05 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2157314/?nav=ais

It was quite witty of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to short-circuit the hostility of those who criticized him for taking his oath on the Quran and to ask the Library of Congress for the loan of Thomas Jefferson's copy of that holy book. But the irony of this, which certainly made his stupid Christian fundamentalist critics look even stupider, ought to be partly at his own expense as well.

In the first place, concern over Ellison's political and religious background has little to do with his formal adherence to Islam. In his student days and subsequently, he was a supporter of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, a racist and crackpot cult organization that is in schism with the Muslim faith and even with the Sunni orthodoxy now preached by the son of the NOI's popularizer Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan's sect explicitly describes a large part of the human species—the so-called white part—as an invention of the devil and has issued tirades against the Jews that exceed what even the most fanatical Islamists have said. Farrakhan himself has boasted of the "punishment" meted out to Malcolm X by armed gangsters of the NOI (see the brilliant documentary Brother Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X, which catches him in the act of doing this). If Ellison now wants to use his faith to justify an appeal to pluralism and inclusiveness and diversity, he needs to repudiate the Nation of Islam, and in much more unambivalent terms than any I have yet heard from him.

As to the invocation of Jefferson, we know that when he and James Madison first proposed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (the frame and basis of the later First Amendment to the Constitution) in 1779, the preamble began, "Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free." Patrick Henry and other devout Christians attempted to substitute the words "Jesus Christ" for "Almighty God" in this opening passage and were overwhelmingly voted down. This vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia's representatives wanted the law "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Quite right, too, and so far so good, even if the term Mahomedan would not be used today, and even if Jefferson's own private sympathies were with the last named in that list.


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A few years later, in 1786, the new United States found that it was having to deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion. The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of today's Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery. The fledgling United States of America was in an especially difficult position, having forfeited the protection of the British Royal Navy. Under this pressure, Congress gave assent to the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by Jefferson's friend Joel Barlow, which stated roundly that "the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen." This has often been taken as a secular affirmation, which it probably was, but the difficulty for secularists is that it also attempted to buy off the Muslim pirates by the payment of tribute. That this might not be so easy was discovered by Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli's envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Medieval as it is, this has a modern ring to it. Abdrahaman did not fail to add that a commission paid directly to Tripoli—and another paid to himself—would secure some temporary lenience. I believe on the evidence that it was at this moment that Jefferson decided to make war on the Muslim states of North Africa as soon as the opportunity presented itself. And, even if I am wrong, we can be sure that the dispatch of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to the Barbary shore was the first and most important act of his presidency. It took several years of bombardment before the practice of kidnap and piracy and slavery was put down, but put down it was, Quranic justification or not.

Jefferson did not demand regime change of the Barbary states, only policy change. And as far as I can find, he avoided any comment on the religious dimension of the war. But then, he avoided public comment on faith whenever possible. It was not until long after his death that we became able to read most of his scornful writings on revelation and redemption (recently cited with great clarity by Brooke Allen in her book Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers). And it was not until long after his death that The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth was publishable. Sometimes known as "the Jefferson Bible" for short, this consists of the four gospels of the New Testament as redacted by our third president with (literally) a razor blade in his hand. With this blade, he excised every verse dealing with virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and other puerile superstition, thus leaving him (and us) with a very much shorter book. In 1904 (those were the days), the Jefferson Bible was printed by order of Congress, and for many years was presented to all newly elected members of that body. Here's a tradition worth reviving: Why not ask all new members of Congress to swear on that?

And here's a tradition worth inaugurating: The Quran repeats and plagiarizes many passages of the New Testament, including some of the most fantastic and mythical ones. Is it not time to apply the razor and produce a reasonable Quran as well? What could be more inclusive? What could be a better application of Jeffersonian original intent?
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Cyrizian



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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oppie,

That would be extremely entertaining to watch as millions of muslims riot and burn flags all because someone cut out all the fantastical stuff out of the quran! What a great idea! I seriously doubt it would ever happen though... Christians don't care if you mess up a bible but muslims.... they would scream lawsuits and death threats if they got wind of this...
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You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior...but everyday I hear people crying for one. -Superman
To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him. -Earnest Renan
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Oppenheimer



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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 4:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And if it was done by a cross section of senior Muslim clerics of all sects seeking also to cut out the rationale of the ethical infants within Islamic society, what then?

But in any case, America's first "war on terror" was a matter of gunboat diplomacy after apeasement had failed.

A lesson from history that is reflected in US policy today, for we don't negotiate nor appease terror, and we (in this post 9/11 world) simply go and kick terrorist ass wherever it may be issuing gaseous emmissions....

The history forms a key part of the legal precedent for doing so.
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