I don't consider Jefferson to be a primary authority on the meaning of the Constitution and the First Amendment. The primary authority is James Madison. Jefferson is a secondary or confirming authority.
There was no reference to God and the Bible in the Northwest Ordinance. The reference was to religion. There was no mixing of the duty which we owe to the Creator and poliitics in the Ordinance. There was an acknowedgement that religion was important in a republican form of government. It was because religion was important that it was exempted from the cognizance of the civil magistrate.
Founding Father James Madison considered it a pure sacred and truly Christian principle ordained by the Savior in Matthew 22:21. See his "Detached Memoranda" where he refers to anything less than the perfect separation of church and state as a vilolation of Matthew 22:21 If some of the States have not embraced this just and this truly Xn principle in its proper latitude, all of them present examples by which the most enlightened States of the old world may be instructed; and there is one State at least, Virginia, where religious liberty is placed on its true foundation and is defined in its full latitude... Ye States of America, which retain in your Constitutions or Codes, any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise & purify your systems, and make the example of your Country as pure & compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political & civil institutions. Founding Father Isaac Backus also believe that the Separation of Church and State was ordained in Matthew 22:21. We view it to be our incumbent duty, to render unto Caesar the things that are his, but that it is of as much importance not to render unto him any thing that belongs only to God, who is to be obeyed rather than man. And as it is evident to us, that God always claimed it as his sole prerogative to determine by his own laws, what his worship shall be, who shall minister in it, and how they shall be supported...
In 1798, ten thousand people marched in the streets of Philadelphia to protest when President John Adams assumed authority to give the American people religious advice. Two years later they turned him out of office. During the Grand Days of the Early Republic Congress did not make God the object of human laws. Yes, it was a different time.
I know. The Constitition incorporated the Biblical principle of Separation of Church and State. That is why the national government was granted no authority over religin. You favor government "advisory" authority over religion. I don't. Only God has "advisory" authority over a man's duties to his Creator.
You sould like a Old Refomed Presbyterian who believes that government are established to glorify God instead of to protect liberty; and sees no distiction between a government acknowedging God and assuming authority over the duties which we owe to our Creator.
You sould like a Refomed Presbyterian who believes that governments are established to glorify God instead of to protect individual liberty and sees no distiction between a government acknowedging God and a government assuming authority over the duties which we owe to our Creator.
Who is disputing this? Not me. What I'm saying is that, for the most part, it was unidirectional. They were concerned primarily with keeping the federal government out of religion.
Actually, I agree in general with how the Founding Fathers did things for their time period. However, as I've stated, much of what they did could not be applied to today. That's what is odd about what you're saying. You're fighting for things to be like the way the founding fathers did it, but if it was, you would scream...