Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
In the United States, the religious and civil liberties are guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States 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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and ...
Neither protected the civil rights safeguarded by the Constitution from the authorities of the individual states of the United States, as the Constitution was only deemed to apply to the central government of the country. The state governments were therefore able to legally exclude persons from holding public offices on religious grounds. [2]
The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is a clause within Article VI, Clause 3: "Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ...
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States", Madison wrote, [113] and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States."
The separation of church and state is a legal and political principle which advocates derive from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
Once the new Constitution went into effect, however, Congress admitted Vermont and Kentucky on equal terms and thereafter formalized the condition in its acts of admission for subsequent states, declaring that the new state enters "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."
The United States government does not collect religious data in its census. The survey below, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2008, was a random digit-dialed telephone survey of 54,461 American residential households in the contiguous United States. The 1990 sample size was 113,723; 2001 sample size was 50,281.