Roger Sherman Quotes

The Founders intended only to prevent the establishment of a single national denomination, not to restrain public religious expressions.

The Government of the United States possesses no power whatever over the question of religion.

Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness, the answer on both points must be in the negative.

The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants.

Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?

When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

Under the First Amendment's prohibition of the establishment of religion, the Court has steadily made religion a matter for the private individual by driving it out of the public arena.

The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.

In 1962, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer from public schools. Since then, federal, state, and local courts and officials, including public school administrators, have joined in a nationwide search and destroy mission for student religious practices.

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

In 1962 (Engel v. Vitale), the Supreme Court explained that the word 'church' would no longer mean a federally established denomination; it would now mean a religious activity in public.

The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church.

The 1st Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of a religion.

The 1st Amendment was established to ensure, in addition to free exercise, that the state did not have the power to establish any particular religious teaching.

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 and State.

[The line] cannot be too strongly drawn between church and state.

the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal, writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), by reason of that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.