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WILLIAM J. FEDERER
Foreword by Hon. John N. Hostettler
Arden, NC
Chapter Eight
WALL OF SEPARATION
over them.
Thomas Helwys founded the Baptist faith in England with
John Smyth and John Murton. Thomas Helwys wrote in A Short
Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity:
can require no more: for mens religion to God is betwixt
God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it,
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member.
Over time, lax enforcement allowed dissenting religious
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On July 4, 1826, the editor of the Christian Watchman (Boston, MA) published the account:
Church, which held its monthly meetings at a short distance from Mr. JEFFERSONS house, eight or ten years
before the American Revolution.
Mr. JEFFERSON attended the meetings of the church
for several months in succession, and after one of them,
with which he complied.
pleased with their Church Government?
Mr. JEFFERSON replied, that it had struck him with
great force, and had interested him much; that he considered it the only form of pure democracy that then existed
in the world, and had concluded that it would be the best
plan of Government for the American Colonies.
Thomas F. Curtis wrote in The Progress of Baptist Principles
in the Last Hundred Years (Charleston, S.C.: Southern Baptist
Publication Society, 1856):
A gentleman . . . in North Carolina . . . knowing that the
venerable Mrs. (Dolley) Madison had some recollections
a distinct remembrance of Mr. Jefferson speaking on the
from which these views were gathered.
President Calvin Coolidge stated at the 150th anniversary of
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with the coercion in Islamic ridda apostasy laws, where Mohammed said:
Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him. (Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, No. 57)
Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari, narrated by Abdullah:
Allahs Apostle said, The blood of a Muslim . . . cannot
be shed except . . . in three cases . . . the one who reverts
from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims. (Hadith
Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 83, No. 17)
Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari, narrated by Ikrima, stated:
Ali burnt some people (hypocrites) . . . . No doubt, I
would have killed them, for the Prophet said, If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him. (Hadith
Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 4:260, Vol. 9, Book 84, No. 57)
Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari stated:
The punishment for apostasy (riddah) is well-known in
Islamic Shareeah. The one who leaves Islam will be
country; if he does not repent and come back to the true
of the command of the Prophet (peace and blessings of
Allah be upon him): Whoever changes his religion, kill
him. (Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari, 3017)
Baptist founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, wrote:
That religion cannot be true which needs such instruments of violence to uphold it.
Jeffersons efforts to disestablish the Anglican Church in
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Virginia would never have passed had it not been for Methodist
Bishop Francis Asbury splitting the popular Methodist movement away from the Anglican Church into its own denomination
in 1785.
There were notable leaders who resisted disestablishing
the Anglican, or as it was now called, the Episcopal Church,
such as Governor Patrick Henry. This movement was later
termed anti-disestablishmentarianism.
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we shall all meet in the end. And that you and I may meet
and embrace, is my earnest prayer.
Over time, brilliant legal minds have used Jeffersons words
to prohibit Jeffersons beliefs. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration: All men are endowed by their Creator . . ., yet in 2005,
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area
School District, ruled students could not be taught of a Creator:
to preserve the separation of church and state.
Groups used Jeffersons phrase separation of church and
state to remove national acknowledgments of God, despite Jeffersons warning against that very thing. Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC is:
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of
a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction
that these liberties are the gift of God?
President Calvin Coolidge stated while laying the cornerstone of the Jewish Community Center, May 3, 1925:
Our country, and every country based on the principle of
popular government, must learn. . .the patriots who laid
the foundation of this Republic drew their faith from the
Bible . . . We cannot escape the conclusion that if American democracy is to remain the greatest hope of humanity, it must continue abundantly in the faith of the Bible.
President Calvin Coolidge stated at the anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926:
The Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual
conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the
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