Herbert Hoover Quotes
The Congress should at once submit an amendment to the Constitution which enables the right to religious devotion in all governmental agencies—national, state or local.
Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964, 31st President of the United States (Republican, IA), Quoted in New York Times, July 1, 1962
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is a critical quotation on the government establishment of religion issue. There are a few people who have argued over the years that the Founding Fathers and their culture was religious and where they were careful to avoid favoring one religion over another, they did NOT intend to put atheism on the same equal plane as religion as far as government action is concerned. However, some of the Founding Fathers were atheists, and some others like John Adams were deists—they believed in a God but not in the Trinity or in Judaism or any organized religion. So this quotation makes it clear that the First Amendment does NOT favor religion over non religion or secularism. Atheism must be on an equal footing but not on a higher plane.
The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.
This publication was one of the best selling in the entire history of America. Rarely has a single publication been read by as high a proportion of a population. Those who support the maintenance of a strict separation of Church and State in America often point to this quotation and the popularity of Common Sense as evidence that not only were the founding fathers in favor of strict separation but so was the general Colonial American public.
Herbert Clark Hoover was an American politician, businessman, and engineer, who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. Before serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the third U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
