William J. Brennan Jr. Quotes
The state must be steadfastly neutral in all matters of faith, and neither favor nor inhibit religion.
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.
William J. Brennan, Jr., 1906-1997, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963
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.
This quotation is one of the first to make the critical observation that the only time that tolerance of a religion is necessary is when there is an established church and others that deviate from it. If there is no established church, as the Founding Fathers envisioned, there is no preeminent church to do the tolerating. All are equal. In practice, Protestant churches were proportionately dominant in early America and up through the 20th century. So most of the issue of tolerance problems in America were cultural. And there is still a minority of Christians who believe that America should be a Christian country and other religions should be “tolerated.” However, Clinton and most of the founders did not want to see even general Christianity established as the national religion even they it was the majority religion.
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.
The same phrase was used by Count de Montalembert at a Catholic conference in Malines, August 20, 1863, and is sometimes attributed to him.
This is one of the key documents showing the “wall of separation of church and state” was in use in early America. Almost 200 years later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court seemed ignorant of this communications. See William Rehnquist: {373663}
William Joseph Brennan Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990. He was the seventh-longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, and known for being a leader of the Court's liberal wing.
