Separation of Church and State is and always has been a lie—a dangerous falsehood weaponized to dismantle our Republic. From its very inception, this phrase was twisted to marginalize Christian values and strip away the moral foundation that has held America together. They want you to believe that faith and patriotism are separate—that you must choose between God and country. That is unacceptable. Don’t fall for it.
We are a Judeo-Christian nation. Our Founders did not intend to erect a secular barrier between God and government—they understood that faith and freedom are inseparable. We must reclaim that truth and not let secular agendas undermine what it means to be American.
He's lying. And he's lying in a particularly bad-faith manner: there has never been a need to choose between one's deity and one's country, not in the United States -- and the secular barrier between religion and government exists precisely so that none of us ever has to.
The Founders represented a very wide cross-section of religious beliefs and attitudes, from Ethan Allen's aggressive Deism and Thomas Paine's agnosticism, to devout Congregationalist Samuel Adams (who broke with cousin John Adams, at least for a time, over the latter's conversion to Unitarianism). All of them had some experience with a state church, and they didn't want it. Their consensus appears to have been that religious belief and practice was a deeply personal matter, which should not be compelled -- or restricted! -- by government. They had no problem with individuals looking to their faith for moral guidance, but they wanted government kept firmly out of it. And as early as 1765, James Madison expressed the thought that a state-established religion was detrimental not only to freedom of religion but also encouraged excessive deference to any authority that might be asserted by an established church. Thomas Jefferson, in the 1779 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom wrote:
[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Your religion is your religion, which you share with the fellow members of that faith; our government is our government, a secular matter. If your faith guides your political choices, that's fine; if your faith compels the political choices of others, or restricts the free expression of their faith, that's wrong. The United States of America is not a "Judeo-Christian nation," it's a nation with strong protection of religious freedom -- and a government open to men and women of all beliefs.
Indiana's Lieutenant governor is peddling disingenuous, deceptive crap. He's shoving men like Paine and Jefferson out of history in favor of nonsensical fairytales about the Founders, in a transparent attempt to justify theocracy.
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