Joseph Story Quotes

Government...may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another... The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality.

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

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.

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors therefore, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

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

When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain.

While just government protects all in their religious rites, true religion affords government its surest support.

Americans are incredibly religious as a nation, and we have gotten that way by having the government stay out of religion and say religion is a private matter. The government doesn't take sides. Public schools don't promote or denigrate any religion.

An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.

The national government...will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.

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.

I think the founding fathers believed religion shouldn't interact directly with government.

I believe that the Framers of the Constitution made their intent clear when they wrote the First Amendment. I believe they wanted to keep the new government from endorsing one religion over another, not erase the public consciousness or common faith.

Christianity is permitted under China's constitution, and the government has long supported a network of official Christian churches.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion.

I don’t see a bit of danger from us having an established religion.

It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent when the public worship of God, and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem as yet new in the history of the world, abundant as it has been in experiments in the theory of government.

State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.

The mixing of government and religion can be a threat to free government, even if no one is forced to participate.... When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion, it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.

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

All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government, are compatible with liberty.

Resolved, That we especially protest against this present attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a part of the people, as establishing a precedent for the entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State, thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty, so carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects.