Cliff Stearns Quotes

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.

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

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.

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The irony of the Supreme Court hearing on these cases last week and of the outright hostility that the Court has displayed against religion in recent years is that above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a concrete display of the Ten Commandments.

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

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

Religious observances should never be held in a public school or introduced into the public school as part of its program.

The First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and non-religion.

Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

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.

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution.

Well, that's the - the removal from office and removal of the Ten Commandments were two different issues.

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

When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.

The manifest object of the men who framed the institutions of this country, was to have a State without religion and a Church without politics—that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an engine for the purposes of the other.... For that reason they built up a wall of complete and perfect partition between the two.

[T]he sole function of the American state, in respect to religion, is to recognize its existence and protect its liberty.