Originally Posted by djplong

This is my point.

People have interpreted the Constitution to mean that the Founders intended for there to be no state religion. And that part is true, but it's not the WHOLE truth.

People have read that clause with the "additional 'a'" in it for a long time - but it simply does not exist.

Every time something like "prayer in school" comes up, those who want it claim that the only thing the Founders prohibited was an arrangement like the Anglican Church in England where *that* was the "official" religion.

The fact of the matter is that the Founders believed that religion was a private matter and not something that government should be involved in - and quite frankly, based on the evidence from thousands of years before and hundreds of years after them, they were correct.