Separation of church & state. Think you know what that means? Guess again.

If you ask most people where the phrase; separation of church and state comes from, they'll most likely tell you that its in the constitution. Wrong. Okay, it must be in the Declaration of Independence then, right? Wrong. Want another crack at it ? Magna Charta maybe. Uh, nope. And neither is it in your Avis rental car agreement. Liberals just love to quote that phrase - as though its some kind of mantra that brings you internal wisdom and peace. But like so many other things we weren't taught correctly - if at all, the origin of that phrase is not quite what we thought it was and not quite what we thought it meant.

Back when the constitution was crafted, the individual state constitutions laid down the law regarding church and state. Hard to believe but as late as 1833 ( almost 50 years after the drafting of the Constitution) certain states actually had religious requirements as to who could hold elected and public offices. North Carolina's constitution said that a person who denied the being of God or belief in the old and new testament, could not hold public office. Several states required an officeholder to be Protestant. The founding fathers were careful not to step on this right of states to choose their own religion. They even spelled it out in the federal agreement between the states, promising that Congress would never try to usurp their power by establishing it's own national religion. They also promised that the federal government would never pass a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So, instead of separation of church and state, there is a clear protection of religious expression outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The separation is clearly between the states and the federal government. Don't get me wrong. I think having a state religion in any of our states is a bad idea, but the Constitution clearly leaves that up to the states, not the federal government.

The phrase separation of church and state is in fact, as liberals like to point out, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson. However, they conveniently leave out the all important context. In 1802, the Connecticut state religion was Congregationalism, and they petitioned the president for aid in religious disestablishment, which Jefferson himself had advocated as Governor of Virginia. The Danbury Baptists were disappointed when the president failed to intervene on the grounds that the federal government was strictly forbidden from interfering in state matters. Although Jefferson used the phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" in that letter to the Danbury Baptists, one must read the full text to grasp it meaning. The statement reads, "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 "state" to which he referred is clearly Congress, which he called the 'legislature'. The First Amendment clearly prohibits Congress from getting involved in the establishment of a national religion for obvious reasons - Congress is prohibited from doing so because that right was reserved for the states alone.

It should be noted that the president did nothing to help the Baptists in their effort, because he did not believe the federal government had a role in this state right. If the federal government did have a role to play, then why was no action taken against the states which had a religious litmus tests even 50 years after the Constitution was established? Also wrongly reported is that Jefferson was an atheist. Not true. In fact he attended a religious service the very day he wrote the Danbury letter. Though he did not belong to a specific church, he was devoted to the idea that our rights come to us from God, not government or man. If that sounds familiar, its because he wrote something quite similar and placed it in the Declaration of Independence. Check it out - its pretty easy to spot. The separationists have so bastardized the the religious establishment clause that they now consider any hint of religion in any government sector to be a violation of the Constitution. As someone whose actually read the Constitution, it frustrates me when I hear that phrase attached to the Constitution because its just not there. However, it is in the old Soviet Union's constitution. How's that for irony?