Gary Nelson: Columnist needs remedial work on founding documents

Re “Allegiance to wall of separation is sacrosanct” (Opinions, April 16): The community columnist wrote, “It is a good thing the author of the Declaration of Independence had the forethought to express the essence and intent in the phrase ‘wall of separation between church and state.’”

I decided to re-read the Declaration of Independence. Two things stood out to me. First, the founding document of our country’s independence mentions God as our Creator, who endows us “with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Second, no where in this document did I see any mention of a separation of church and state, in word or thought.

In a nutshell, the Establishment Clause (disempowering Congress from making a state religion) and the Free Exercise Clause (establishing the freedom to exercise one’s religion) are found in the U.S. Constitution. Nowhere will you find “separation of church and state” except in Thomas Jefferson’s letter in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association. And it was later baptized into our Constitutional law by Justice Hugo Black in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947.

That same constitution gives us the right to freely exercise our speech. But we shouldn’t use this power to rewrite history to bolster our own agenda.

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Gary Nelson: Columnist needs remedial work on founding documents."