From: dmcanzi@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (David Canzi)
Subject: Re: "Separation of Church and State"
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 07:08:15 GMT

In article <parsons.724484675@cygnus.cis.ksu.edu.cis.ksu.edu> parsons@cis.ksu.edu (Scott S Parish ) writes:
>bobbe@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Robert Beauchaine) writes:
>>"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 soveriegn 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."
>
>>     [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT.
>>      "The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519]
>
>"... Although the statesmen and patriots who framed the Constitution had
>made it clear that no one Christian denomination would become the official
>denomination, the Danbury Baptists expressed their concern over a rumor
>that a particular denomination was soon to be recognized as the national
>denomination.  On January 1, 1802, President Jefferson responded to the
>Danbury Baptists in a letter.  He calmed their fears by using the now 
>infamous phrase to assure them that the federal government would not
>establish any single denomination of Christianity as the national
>denomination.

The first amendment uses the word "religion" without any qualifiers to
indicate that it is only about Christian religions.  Jefferson, in the
text quoted above, quotes from the first amendment, and calls the
principle he quotes "separation of church and State".  (Did Jefferson
*really* capitalize "State", but not "church", or is that a typo?)
Again, nothing in his remarks indicates any qualification of his
principles to apply only to Christianity.  The separation of church and
State is stated as a general principle then applied to a specific
case.

From this specific application of a general principle, David Bartion,
and you in subsequent postings, attempt to argue that the principle was
only meant to apply to that specific case.  But if you want to argue
that Jefferson's intended meaning of the separation of church and State
is more specific than it appears on the basis of a specific application
of it, you'll need to explain why you suppose it to be specific to
Christianity.  Why isn't it more general, applying to Christianity and
Judaism, or to all monotheistic religions?  Why isn't it more specific,
protecting only Baptists?  The exact degree of specificity of
applicability of the principle of separation of church and State that
you propose is arbitrary, and not justifiable from Jefferson's letter
or the context in which it was written.

Here's an argument logically equivalent to yours that makes the
absurdity clearer:  If somebody applied Newton's principle of universal
gravitation to apples, predicting that apples would fall to the ground,
and I thought the way you seem to, I might claim that he meant for the
law of gravity to apply only to fruits.
-- 
David Canzi
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc