Religious Sect Quotes
The Senate was presented with James Madison’s Language for the First Amendment. These three alternatives were proposed and rejected. The rejected versions turn out to have been very important. Some have argued that the First Amendment does not prohibit Congress making laws regarding religion as long as it doesn’t favor one religion over another—for example pay for clerics of all religions. However, that was the third proposal and it was rejected in favor of the high wall of separation proposed by Madison.
This was more than a decade before the Bill of Rights was created and passed. Delaware was so concerned about the separation of church and state that they would not allow any religious cleric or official, to serve in any position of the state militia or government. New York State the following year {621429} placed the same prohibition against clerics serving in any branch of the government. The U. S. Bill of rights did not go that far, but there are a number of religions that also support this notion. Perhaps the most dramatic example was Pope John Paul’s prohibition of Priests running for elective office.
The most contentious issues regarding this Constitutional principle is the attempted prohibition of the teaching of evolution in public schools and/or the requirement to teach “creation science”, a contrary view about evolution which is religious and not science. Evolution is particularly contentious because most religions differ widely on the subject. Amongst Jews, Muslims and Christians, evolution is opposed by most strict fundamentalists and endorsed by the rest—the majority. Except for Roman Catholics where all, even the fundamentalists, accept the Theory of Evolution.
