| Recently, when a state
trooper stationed himself in my church parking lot and monitored traffic on Rt. 45, I considered asking him if he was violating the separation of church and state. I only wish I had photographed the car with the church in the background in case I would need evidence to show the ACLU. The late Justice Harry Blackmun, known best for his decision legalizing the genocide/womb-cleansing of unborn babies, also distinguished himself as an advocate of strict separation of church and state. Blackmun was compared by Chief Justice Rehnquist to a predecessor, Justice Joseph Story, but Story and Blackmun differed dramatically on the separation issue. Story wrote, "The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government." In another unanimous decision in 1844 by the Supreme Court, Story delivered, "Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the school...Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?" On the basis of the Constitution and Justice Story's belief that civil liberty cannot be separated from religious liberty without danger and destruction to both, I welcome the return of the policeman to my church's parking lot.
Rev. Gabriel J. Morley |