Los Angeles Times: American conservatives are deeply divided about Thomas Jefferson. His Democratic-Republican Party embraced many bedrock conservative principles, favoring states’ rights, opposing attempts by the Federalists to strengthen the federal government and generally promoting individual liberty and freedom. And for those things he remains a hero and a paragon to the modern Republican Party’s fiscally conservative, libertarian and tea party wing.
But many religious conservatives are less comfortable with Jefferson. America’s third president was a deist, at best, who authored his own interpretation of the New Testament, removing all references to Jesus’ divinity. More significantly, he penned the phrase many social conservatives have in recent decades denounced, advocating a steadfast “wall of separation between church and state.”
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum revived the debate about separating church and state this week when he talked about a 1960 campaign trail speech given by the nation’s 35th president,John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy gave the speech to address fears that he, as a Roman Catholic, would answer to the pope rather than the U.S. Constitution. In it, he said that he believed in “an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
Categories: Americas, Separation of Church and State, United States