Separation of Church and State

Good comment. With regard to religion, the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution simply states "Congress shall make no law respectin an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Until the passage of the 14th amendment which applied the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the state governments, the states were free to designate specific churches as the official church. In fact either 6 or 7 of the original 13 states had official, state supported churches (which the taxpayers had to pay for). Since the same church was not choosen by all of the states with official churches (in other words, there were different official churches) there was a fear that if Congress recognized a particular church as the official church of the U.S. that we would risk civil war over which church to recognize. The Founding Fathers were only a generation or so removed from the English Civil War (which was over religion) and the Thirty Years War in Europe over religion as well as other battles between competing churches in other European countries. The religion clause was put in the Constitution to prevent this NOT prevent recognition of God in public life or to banish religion from the nation.