State Church Quotes

Turn a Christian society into an established church and it is no longer a voluntary assembly for the worship of God; it is a powerful corporation full of such sentiments and passions as usually distinguish these bodies: a dread of innovation, an attachment to abuses, a propensity to tyranny and oppression.

I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn't think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.

Resolved, That we especially protest against this present attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a part of the people, as establishing a precedent for the entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State, thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty, so carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

The Russian Orthodox Church, being part of the one Universal Church of Christ, shall have the pre-eminent public and legal status among other confessions in the Russian State, which befits her as the greatest shrine for the overwhelming majority of the population and a great historical force that built the Russian State… As soon as they are made public, decrees and statutes issued the Orthodox Church for herself in the order established by herself, as well as deeds of the church government and court shall be recognised by the State as legally valid and important unless they violate state laws… State laws concerning the Orthodox Church shall be issued only with the consent of the church authorities

... the loathsome combination of church and state.

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realized they can't get away with it.

The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.

Prior to the Revolution, the Episcopal Church was established by law in this State. On the Declaration of independence it was left with all other sects, to a self-support. And no doubt exists that there is much more of religion among us now than there ever was before the change; and particularly in the Sect which enjoyed the legal patronage. This proves rather more than, that the law is not necessary to the support of religion.

In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable.

In a word, the free Church in a free State has been the programme which led me to my first efforts, and which I continue to regard as just and true, reasonable and practical, after the studies of thirty years.

PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.

The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

The church state-wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.

In 1962 (Engel v. Vitale), the Supreme Court explained that the word 'church' would no longer mean a federally established denomination; it would now mean a religious activity in public.

I don’t see a bit of danger from us having an established religion.

If a person is not a member of the State Church [the Evangelical Lutheran Church] or any other recognized religious group in the country, he shall pay to the University of Iceland or benefit fund of that university, as may be determined, dues otherwise payable to the State Church.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

But separation of church and state was never meant to separate God and government.

Separation of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political power.

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.