"After the town of Gadara in a biblical story where two demon-possessed men ask Christ to send them into a herd of swine. They dash into the herd and all the animals rush violently over a cliff."
It wasn't the demon possessed men that asked to go into the pigs...the demons did.
If the men are "possessed" by demons, how are the men to be distinguished from demons -- especially after they've gone over the cliff?
Or are they cartoon characters?
The Lone Haranguer
"The governor could be excused for not knowing that what she held in her hand was a translation, but not for mixing state and religion. But here we'll focus on the former."
Despite the fact that said governor lacked some common sense, she did know her Constitution and Amendments.
The phrase "separation of church and state" are not in the First Amendment, or the entire Constitution for that matter. Nor separation of religion and state. Rather, the First Amendment reads: "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 to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
While I don't agree with the governer's stupidity on foreign languages, I do believe that you should research what you send out to make certain it's done properly.
Welcome, rannnel.
If Anu has, in your opinion made a minor slip in attributing this phrase to the constitution, there is little doubt that it accurately reflects what was in the mind of the founding fathers. It was a letter from Thomas Jefferson on January 1 1802 that described his vision of how church and state required a degree of clear separation:
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.There’s an interesting view of his manuscript available:
http://www.christianlaw.org/pdf/Jeff_danbury.pdfYou will note that (in keeping with the separation of topics on this board) I have addressed only the language topic and not the doubtless incendiary religious or social issues around the term's extension by the SC in 1947...! ;)