Enclosed below are some thoughts, tolerant and otherwise, on religious freedom..
Isaac Backus, Baptist [1781]: “As religion must always be a matter between God and individuals, no man can be made a member of a truly religious society by force and without his own consent, neither can any corporation that is not a religious society have a just right to govern in religious affairs…”
Louis Brandeis, “Olmstead”: “The makers of our constitution undertook..to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thought, their emotions, and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men…The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal…”
Henry Clay [1818]: “All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.”
Mary Baker Eddy [1906]: “I would no more quarrel with a man because of his religion than I would because of his art.”
Jerry Falwell [1976]: “The idea of religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. If any place in the world we need Christianity, it’s in Washington. And that’s why preachers long since, need to get over the intimidation forced on us by liberals, that if we mention anything about politics, we are degrading our ministry.”
Harry Dudley Field [1893]: “If we had nothing else to boast of, we could claim with justice that the first among nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his Maker were a private concern which other men had no right to intrude.”
Barry Goldwater [19810: “Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected with them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.”
Thomas Jefferson [1784]: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”
Robert Jeffress, pastor, First Baptist Church of Dallas: “What a lot of people miss is, America is not a church where everyone should be welcome regardless of race and background.” “Islam is wrong. It is a heresy from the pit of hell. Judaism – you can’t be saved being a Jew.” In a 2011 sermon, called the Catholic Church a corrupt version of Christianity that sprang from ancient Babylonian cults.
Richard M. Johnson [1830]: “It is not the legitimate province of the legislature to determine what religion is true, or what is false.”
John F. Kennedy [9/12/60]: “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 a Catholic] how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote – where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference – and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
Thomas Kennedy [1823]: “There are a few Jews in the United States; in Maryland there are very few. But if there were only one – to that one, we ought to do justice.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. [1963]: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
Robert E. Lee [l1/27/56 letter]: “Is it not strange that the first descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?”
John Leland, great Baptist preacher – Rejected the idea America was a Christian nation; advocated a radical separation of government and religion; contended any sort of establishment of Christianity, including all state establishments, were “all of them, Anti-Christocracies; favored equality foe Deists, pagans, atheists, Jews, Turks, and Catholics; rejected “test oaths” for office; above all insisted “religion is a matter between God and individuals,” not subject to governmental jurisdiction. Leland was a contemporary, and influenced, James Madison.
Margaret Mead [1963]: “We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of the country.”
New Jersey Constitution [1776]: no person should “ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rates, for the purpose of building or re[pairing any other church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or has deliberately or voluntarily engaged himself to perform.”
North Carolina Constitution [17760: “neither shall any person, on any pretence whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship, contrary to his own faith or judgment, nor be obliged to pay, for the purchase of any glebe, or the building of any house of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes right…..”
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: “Persecution is not an original feature in nay religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”
Pennsylvania Constitution [1776]: “…no man ought or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry, contrary to or against, his own free will and consent,”
Pat Robertson [700 Club]: “You say you’re supposed to be nice to Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.”
Robert Simonds, president “Citizens for Excellence inEducation” and National Association of Christian Educators [1991[: ‘Our job is to evangelize..schools are the battle ground. The goal of 500,000 born-again Christians working inside the ‘system’ is to bring public education back under..control of the Christian community.”
Randall Terry: “Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty..are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time..don’t want pluralism,”
Alexis de Tocqueville, “democracy in America”: “..the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on my arrival in the United States”…the “faithful of all communities…agreed…the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that,”
Virginia fundamentalists, “Religious Petitions Presented to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1774-1802″ To require a person to support even the religion of his choice denied him his freedom of choice and his right to religious liberty.”
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom [1785]: to compel anyone to support religious opinions he did not share was tyrannical and “that even the forcing of him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty” of giving his money as he pleased….that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship place, or ministry whatsoever.”
George Washington, 17809 letter: “I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”
With Justice For All 