David Barton Quotes

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

The arbitrary division between church and state... is used, as an easily identifiable rallying point, to subdue the opinions of that vast body of citizens who represent those with religious convictions.

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions.

The Founders intended only to prevent the establishment of a single national denomination, not to restrain public religious expressions.

Today the separation of church and state is America is used to silence the church... The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent... It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas... To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.

The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion.

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.

History makes the point time and time again No greater mischief can be created than to merge the power of religion with the power of government.

The disconnection of Church and State was a master stroke for freedom and harmony.

Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, ...(that) we should build a wall between the church and state.

Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy.

The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

But separation of church and state was never meant to separate God and government.

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.

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.

When the government says to you that they want to help you be more religious, you want to run away from them as fast as possible.

Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.

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

It is not for the pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political construction and organization of social life.

The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State

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

our great common challenge ... is to free people from religion, get it out of our laws, our schools, our health systems, our government and, I would add, also our sporting events. I would really like to see some separation of church and stadium, if we could work on that.