Dan Barker Quotes

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

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

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.

It is neither sacrilegious or antireligious to say that each separate government should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.

It is no part of the of the business of government to compose official prayers.

Government has no more right to help us Christians flaunt our beliefs than it has to suppress any faith.

Although the ACLU would argue that it is unconstitutional for me, as a public official, to do this in a government building, let alone at a football game, I will end with my prayer for the next administration: Please God, no more Souters.

The intensive and concerted effort to exclude references to religion or God from public places is an attack on our founding principles. It's an attempt to bolster a growing reliance on the government--especially the judiciary--as the source of our rights. But if our rights are not unalienable, if they don't come from a source higher than ourselves, then they're malleable at the will of the state. This is a prescription for tyranny.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

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.

We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

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

Today the people from my State of Tennessee would listen to this debate, or even talk about a reference to God on our money or in the Halls of Congress or in our Pledge and say, please, let common sense and logic win the day and prevail versus legal mumbo jumbo.

I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don't believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reflects that concept recognized in the Ten Commandments, that the duties we owe to God and the manner of discharging those duties are outside the purview of government.

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

The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government's prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

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

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

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

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the 1st Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief. [Article 28, 1889 Constitution] Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. 2) No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebration, rite or practice. 3) The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity. [Article 20, 1946 Constitution]

The freedom of all faiths, and non faiths, is best protected when government does not give its blessings to any.