Spiritual Renewal Quotes
The Irish monks were loyal to the pope and were outraged when he was displaced by King Henry VIII. They were seen as a hotbed of disloyalty and therefore ordered to close. This is one of the many examples where an established government church dictated not only how people should worship but also prohibit other religions from functioning. These examples were well known to the American Founding Fathers and much of educated American opinion which was one of the drivers of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.
This Arab nationalist leader was actually a Christian Orthodox by religion. He also tried to make the Baath party a secular state and he was a strong advocate of free speech and democracy. When the Islamic fundamentalists became important in Mid East Politics, the Baath Iraq Government under Saddam Hussein claimed, with no evidence, that Aflaq converted to Islam on his deathbed, thus making his philosophy more acceptable to the vast majority of Arabs.
Since the founding of America the issue of whether the founding fathers had intended to erect a wall of separation between church or state has been debated. Those favoring less separation often point to Franklin who avowed his belief in a deity and proposed formal prayers to begin each session of the Constitutional Convention. Those favoring strict separation counter by observing that Franklin’s motion for something as innocuous as opening prayers could not muster a majority, arguing that this start together with the language of separation supports their view.
