Gordon Brown Quotes

Religious liberty, hey, it's about religious liberty. And there has to be a melding of both. We're living in a time where you have to have a melding of both. But it's very unfair what they're doing to religion in this country.

T]he prevailing opinion in Europe, England not excepted, has been that religion could not be preserved without the support of government nor government be supported without an established religion that there must be at least an alliance of some sort between them. It remained for North America to bring the great and interesting subject to a fair, and finally a decisive test

Freedom of religion does not entitle your religion to have a privileged position within the public sphere.

Quite often you hear people say, 'What about separation of church and state?' There is no such thing.

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

Whatever America's founders believed about Christianity - and they believed a wide range of things - they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.

Whether we like it or not, religion and government policy are unavoidably linked.

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion …. The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

What is crucial is that a government practice not have the effect of communicating a message of governmental endorsement or disapproval of religion.

All religions in France are subject to the rules of secularism.

The United States may be a religious nation. But it is also a nation with a strong commitment to separation of church and state.

You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rathe, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other.

Church and state are, and must remain, separate.

The modern concept of separation is an argument for a total separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the acceptance of the doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an influence in civil government.

I believe that religion should be totally separated from the state. That's not the way it is today, not even in Sweden.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

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

Most people I know I think agree and even many theists agree with this. We don't want government involved.

Religion is extremely important in this democracy - so important that it occupies a prime position in the Bill of Rights.

I think that we are at a point in our country where we're trying to decide what role should religion play in the political arena.

Government needs to stay out of the religion business altogether.

I certainly do not support excluding faith from public life.

The problem is that you can't impose the church's teachings on all Americans as a matter of law.