One last post about politics, for now. This is a couple of weeks old, but is an interesting little post about the history of the phrase “separation of Church and State”, as well as the concept. Here is a little blurb to whet your appetite:

The drafters of the First Amendment didn’t use the words “separation of church and state” to describe the principle of no establishment. But by prohibiting the federal government from passing any law “respecting an establishment of religion,” the Framers clearly and unambiguously separated the institutions of government and religion.

Glen Urquhart got it partly right. Thomas Jefferson was not the first to use the language of “separation.” But Hitler didn’t invent the concept either (and his brutal repression of religion bears no resemblance to Jeffersonian separation).

It was Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, who in 1640 called for “a hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.”

What Williams believed then is still true today: Entanglement of religion and government corrupts faith and oppresses conscience. Separating church from state is not just a good idea – it is the essential condition for full religious liberty.