One should understand that "Separation of Church and State" is not actually a law. It is a doctrine, or a legal concept, that has been implemented by the various courts primarily over the last fifty years.[26]

The phrase "Separation of Church and State" has been bandied about for so long that 67% of all Americans believe that it is actually in the Constitution.[27]

Many rulings have not only violated the intent, but have even been declared unconstitutional those ideals which were the regular practices of the Founding Fathers themselves,[48] as revealed in their own words:

John Adams, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; One of Two Signers of the Bill of Rights; Second President of the US:"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."[2, 5, 48]

George Washington, First President of the United States: "True religion offers to government its surest support . . . It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."[14]

James Wilson, George Washington’s appointment to the Supreme Court: "Christianity is part of the common-law."[14]

James Madison, from America's God and Country by William Federer: "We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind to self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."[5]

President John Adams in an address to military on 10/11 /1798: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions if they're not bridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Signature on the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment.[48]

John Q. Adams, 6th President of the US: "Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christ?"[33]

John Q. Adams: "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were . . . the general principles of Christianity."[34]

John Q. Adams, July 4, 183: "Why is it friends and fellow citizens that we are here assembled? Why is it that next to the birthday of the Savior of the World that our joyous and most venerated festival occurs on this day? Is it not that in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior, that it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation?"[15]

Joseph Story ("Father of American Jurisprudence," US Supreme Court Justice President James Madison) 1829 inaugural address as Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University: "One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law . . .There never has been a period in which the Common law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations . . . I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil authority."[5, 20]

Noah Webster, publisher of The American Dictionary of the English Language: "Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the Christian religion." [13]

Doctor Daniel L. Dreisbech is a professor at American University in Washington, DC. He holds the following degrees: BA from the University of South Carolina, D.Phil. from Oxford University, and JD from the University of Virginia. His principal research interests include American constitutional law and history, First Amendment law, church-state relations, and criminal procedure.[52] He has made the following comments regarding the "Wall of Separation between Church and State."

"Jefferson carefully deliberately placed his wall between the national government and state government on matters pertaining to religion. It's a wall about Federalism; its not a wall to exclude religion from public life.[50]

Jefferson’s “wall,” according to conventional wisdom, represents a universal principle on the prudential and constitutional relationship between religion and the civil state. To the contrary, this “wall” had less to do with the separation between religion and all civil government than with the separation between federal and state governments on matters pertaining to religion. The “wall of separation” was a metaphoric construction of the US Constitution’s First Amendment, which Jefferson said imposed its restrictions on the federal government only. In other words, the “wall” Jefferson constructed separated the federal regime on one side and state governments and religious authorities on the other.[51]

"I don't believe that many so-called advocates of a strict and high and impregnable wall of separation are in fact honest and consistent adherents to the wall of separation. Virtually all advocate the separation of religion and religious influences from public life, from the concerns of civic life. But few, at least in my experience, few I have heard consistently argue that the state should be separated from the concerns of the church. Few strict separationists, in my experience at least, are willing even in strict adherence to their own wall of separation principle to exempt churches and the clergy and religious entities from the civil state's generally applicable criminal laws, employment laws, tax laws, zoning laws, as well as health and safety regulations. . . . We are overwhelmed with the state's regulations. But how can that be if there's a separation of church and state? . . . My complaint here is that the other side is not very honest in its use of this metaphor. . . . The wall of separation is used to restrict the church, to silence the church, and to limit its reach into public life. . . thereby promoting a religion that is essentially private in a state that is strictly secular.[50]

"Today the wall is a sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma, intolerant to religious influences in the public arena. Federal and state courts have used the to wall of separation concept to justify censoring private religious expression such as Christmas crèches in public forum. They've used this metaphor to strip public spaces of religious symbols, to deny public benefits such as education vouchers for religious entities, and to exclude religious citizens and organizations from full participation in civic life on the same terms as their secular counterparts.[50]

Thomas Jefferson believed that the government was to be powerless to interfere with religious expressions . . .[and] had no intention of allowing the government to limit, restrict, regulate, or interfere with public religious practices. He believed, along with the other Founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination . . . Jefferson had committed himself as President to pursuing the purpose of the First Amendment: preventing the "establishment of a particular form of Christianity" by the Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or any other denomination.[13]

"There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation between [church and State] . . . the 'wall of separation between church and State' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." — Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist[3]