The "Wall of Separation" metaphor is admittedly not in the Constitution. Separationists must turn to Thomas Jefferson for the phrase. But even Jefferson is small help for the Secularists' hidden agenda, to say nothing of all the other Framers who clearly would have rejected that agenda.

Separation of Church and State Home Page

Vine & Fig Tree's Anti Separation Page

ARGUMENT ONE: The phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the Constitution

"No magic attaches to a particular verbalization of an underlying concept. The concept at issue here is more accurately expressed in Madison's phrase 'separation between Religion and Government,' or in the popular maxim that 'religion is a private matter.'" (Church, State, and Freedom, pp. 118-119).

Second, accommodationists don't apply this argument consistently. Pfeffer, for example, observes that:

[T]he phrase "Bill of Rights" has become a convenient term to designate the freedoms guaranteed in the first ten amendments; yet it would be the height of captiousness to argue that the phrase does not appear in the Constitution. Similarly, the right to a fair trail is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the term "fair trial" is not found in the Constitution. To bring the point even closer to home, who would deny that "religious liberty" is a constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms, including "separation of church and state," have received in America would seem to confirm rather than disparage their reality as basic American democratic principles (pp. 118)

Separationists have ripped Jefferson's phrase out of its 18th-century context and turned it into something that not a single person who signed the Constitution would agree with. When polygamists in Utah argued that their religion of multiple-wives was a "private matter," the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, citing Jefferson, saying that this was a Christian nation where polygamy had always been publicly prohibited.

Learn more about the myth of "private religion."

Non-separationists are not inconsistent to note that Jefferson's phrase is not in the Constitution. That is simply a yellow light to slow down and notice that the phrase is now being used in a way that would not be supported by a single person who signed the Constitution, and that we are justified to question its use. It would be wrong (unfortunately) to argue that the Post Office is unconstitutional, because it's in the Constitution. Arguing that there should be no "separation of church and state" in not going against the Constitution, because it's not there.

|| Arg 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 ||
|| 8 || 9 || 10 || 11 || 12 || 13 || 14 ||

Anti-Separation Home