Bill Clinton Quotes

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the 1st Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Acknowledgment of God is not now, or ever has been, a violation of the US constitution.

The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.

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

If prayer is to leave the public schools, let the ridicule of prayer leave also.

People for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?

In 1962, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer from public schools. Since then, federal, state, and local courts and officials, including public school administrators, have joined in a nationwide search and destroy mission for student religious practices.

Banning prayer in school in effect made God unconstitutional.

I'm for prayer in schools.

With that in mind and in celebration of National Prayer Day, today I have proposed in the House of Representatives a Constitutional Amendment that would restore voluntary prayer in our Nation's schools.

The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

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

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.

I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer - a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.

Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.

It was the courts, of course, that took away prayer from our schools, that took away Bible reading from our schools. It's the courts that gave us same-sex marriage. So it is quite a battlefield, and the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land.

Allowing Texas to display the Ten Commandments on State property but disallowing Kentucky courthouses from doing the same is a poor and flawed interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Neither the wording of the amendment itself nor common practice challenged the widely held belief that government guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I don't have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors therefore, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

There is little doubt that religious liberty is best exercised within the setting of the secular state.

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

Zealous groups threaten to infringe civil liberties when they seek government support to impose their own religious views on non-adherents. This has taken many forms, including attempts to introduce organized prayer in public schools, to outlaw birth control and abortion, and to use public tax revenues to finance religious schools.

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.