Chuck Grassley Quotes

The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.

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.

What James Madison and the other men of his generation had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment was that there should be no official relationship of any character between government and any church or many churches, and no levying of taxes for the support of any church, or many churches, or all churches, or any institution conducted by any of them.

Each new lawsuit seeks to expand the size of the 'religion-free zone' in the public square.

To the ACLU, the First Amendment speaks more directly to freedom from religion than it does to freedom of religion.

Waiving the rights of conscience, not included in the surrender implied by the social state, & more or less invaded by all Religious establishments, the simple question to be decided, is whether a support of the best & purest religion, the Christian religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided for by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provisions of those who profess it.

Nowhere have the forces of intolerance been displayed less tolerantly than in the area of religious speech and practice.

The ACLU sues no matter what public property a religious symbol is placed on.

In the case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court ruled that - under 'separation of church and state' - it was unconstitutional for a student in school to even see a copy of the Ten Commandments.

The history of our nation is intertwined with a certain religious tradition, and that the First Amendment was not intended to result in the complete exclusion of religious beliefs from our public classrooms.

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.

We live in a very pluralistic society today. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Christians like me. There are a wide variety of religious expressions in this country. I think they all must be treated with respect and none of them must be given priority in the public arena.

Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect.

On the issues of religious liberty, the Supreme Court continues to scrape against the bedrock of the American spirit.

Last year I was on Pat Robertson's show, and we discussed our basic Christian faith - for instance, separation of church and state. It's contrary to my beliefs to try to exalt Christianity as having some sort of preferential status in the United States. That violates the Constitution. I'm not in favor of mandatory prayer in school or of using public funds to finance religious education.

Lately the First Amendment has been interpreted to deny equal protection of the law to those who believe in God. The Constitution established freedom for religion, not freedom from religion!

The First Amendment isn't about free thought and free opinion and free belief. The First Amendment is about free exercise: the carrying into practice of religious principles and beliefs and convictions.

The First Amendment exists to protect our religious liberty--to ensure that all Americans are able to seek out worship God with all our hearts, free from government coercion; it does not mandate scouring the public square to forcibly remove all acknowledgement s of the Almighty

Within my own lifetime, I have seen the most ferocious assaults on Christian faith and morals; first on the part of the intellectual community, and then on the part of the government... the federal government has not even tried to conceal its hostility to religion.

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.

Our legal and political culture has created a bias in the law that borders on censorship against reading, displaying, or quoting the Bible.

The ACLU sees the separation of church and state as so absolute that not a single religious word must be allowed to pass a schoolhouse door.

In 1965, in Reed v. Van Hoven, a court determined (237 F.Supp. 48. W.D.Mich. 1965.) that it was permissible for students to pray over their lunch at school so long as no one knew they were praying - that is, they couldn't say words or move their lips, but they could pray only if no one knew about it!

The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.

The time has now come to amend the Constitution to restore freedom of speech for America's people of faith.