Separation of Church and State

The words 'Separation of Church and State' are not expressly written in the Constitution or the Bill of rights. Rather it is based on Thomas Jefferson's interpretation of the 'Establishment ' clause that James Madison introduced in the 1st amendment.

Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

First Amendment to the Constitution

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Section 1

"... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Thomas Jefferson's interpretation of the first amendment

'Seperation of Church and State': a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802)

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, 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."

In a letter to the Rev. Samuel Miller (Jan. 23, 1808)

"I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted [forbid] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises…."

James Madison's summary of the First Amendment:

"Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform" (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug. 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731)

More thoughts from Madison:
"...the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State" [Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819]

"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together" [Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822].

U.S. Supreme Court

Hugo Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"The establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion."
[Majority opinion Emerson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
[Emerson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

"We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a state nor the federal government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws nor impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of a God as against those religions founded on different beliefs."
[Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)]

Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court:
'The Lemon Test', in the majority opinion in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). It Determines if a law is permissible under the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

A law must have a secular purpose.
It must have a primary effect which neither advances nor inhibits religion.
It must avoid excessive entanglement of church and state.

"Christianity is not established by law, and the genius of our institutions requires that the Church and the State should be kept separate....The state confesses its incompetency to judge spiritual matters between men or between man and his maker ... spiritual matters are exclusively in the hands of teachers of religion."
[Melvin v. Easley (1860)]

"First, this Court has decisively settled that the First Amendment's mandate that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' has been made wholly applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment.... Second, this Court has rejected unequivocally the contention that the Establishment Clause forbids only governmental preference of one religion over another."
[Justice Tom C. Clark, School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963)]

"Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of nonreligion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion."
[Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103 (1968)]

Others

Ulysses S. Grant

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated."

Martin Luther King, Jr.
"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."

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