Christine O’Donnell mocked for asking where in the constitution does the term “separation of church and state” appear

  During a recent debate between  Christine O’Donnell and  Chris Coons, Christine O’Donnell actually drew mocking laughter from the audience when she asked Coons, “where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Her opponent and the liberal media have used this question to imply that she does not have an understanding of the fundamentals written in the constitution. But is that the truth or is it just political spin being used against her?

  Instead of laughing at Christine O’Donnell perhaps the left would have been better off picking up a copy of the constitution and reading it before dismissing O’Donnell as being ignorant of the content of the constitution, because if they had they would realize that this is a legitimate question. The term “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the constitution and that is the point that she was trying to make.

  Let us take a look at the part of the first amendment which deals with religion.

  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

  Nope, the term “separation of church and state” is nowhere to be found. I have written about this several times before but in light of yet another example of the left’s ignorance of what is actually in the constitution it is worth going into one more time.

  The term “separation of church and state” actually appears in a letter that Thomas Jefferson sent to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 in reply to a letter sent to him while he was president. The Baptists were worried that they were not going to be allowed to practice their religion so they sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson which stated their concerns. Thomas Jefferson sent a reply to the Baptist to assuage their fear in which he wrote, ” I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

  It wasn’t until the Reynolds v. United States case in 1878 that a judge ruled Thomas Jefferson’s words in a private conversation captured the essence of the true meaning of the first amendment, thus figuratively writing the “wall of separation between church and state” into the constitution.

  So it turns out that technically Christine O’Donnell was correct when she asked the question, albeit she probably didn’t phrase the question properly and she was not given the opportunity to expound on what she meant by the question. But Thomas Jefferson’s letter did hit on the true intent of the first amendment, if the left would use his interpretation the way that he meant it when he wrote the infamous phrase.

  Thomas Jefferson wrote that phrase while defending the rights of a religion which at the time was in the minority, he was defending their right to practice their religion. But today’s left has actually used Thomas Jefferson’s phrase to infringe upon the right of the people the “free exercise” of their religion–the exact opposite of Thomas Jefferson’s intent.

  Thomas Jefferson was writing about the fact that the government could not set up a state sponsored religion, but not writing that Baptists, or any other religion, could be denied practicing their religion–just the opposite–yet the left has twisted Thomas Jefferson’s words to somehow mean that the government does have the right to limit religious practices in certain places.

   The left goes out of its way to ensure that no religious symbols are displayed in public for fear that this would somehow be a case of the state sponsoring one religion over another, but let me ask you this: If in a school or in a public building a person is told that he or she cannot bring a bible into that building and may not pray out loud, is that not infringing on a person’s right to the free exercise of religion? Is this not the government violating the infamous “separation of church and state” that they love to quote when it fits their agenda?

  The “separation of church and state” that the left so loves to quote is often used to deny a person their right to free exercise of that religion and yet the left conveniently forgets that if there is a total “separation of church and state” the state has no right to tell a person where and when they can practice their religion.

  The left wants to have it both ways with their “separation of church and state” argument; they use it to ban religious displays and public prayer, and that is a direct contradiction to the meaning Thomas Jefferson had when he wrote those words.