The Plum Line
Greg Sargent's blog
Palin: Founding Fathers Wouldn’t Agree With Separation Of Church And State
A bunch of people have already had some fun with Sarah Palin’s claim, at a religious gathering in Kentucky, that religion shouldn’t be “separated” from the state.
Word of Palin’s assertion came in an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal about an evangelical women’s conference featuring Palin. It quotes Palin as saying: “God shouldn’t be separated from the state.”
But I’ve got a full transcript of Palin’s remarks, and it’s worse than you might have thought: She cited the Founding Fathers as proof that God shouldn’t be separated from the state. Peter Smith, the Courier-Journal reporter who broke the story, sends over the full context of her remarks:
I beg you, Women of Joy, to bring light and be involved, loving America and praying for her. Really, it is our solemn duty. Praying for true spiritual awakening to overcome deterioration. That is where God wants us to be. Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our Founding Fathers, they were believers. And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life.
This is substandard history. In reality, the separation of church and state, thanks in part to the efforts of those very same Founding Fathers, is enshrined in the Bill of Rights:
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.
And the phrase “separation of church and state” is generally associated with a letter written by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in which he interpreted the above clause along those lines.
There was a time when this sort of thing would provoke widespread media mockery and perhaps even be seen as a potential disqualifier for the presidency.
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