87 Court Precedents
- The purest principles of morality are to be taught. Where are they found? Whoever searches for them must go to the source from which a Christian man derives his faith—the Bible.
Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 1844 - Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government.
People v. Ruggles, 1811 (2 decades after the 1st Amendment) - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. First Amendment
- By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing.
Runkel v. Winemiller, 1796 - The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state, but that wall is a one directional wall; it keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, January 1, 1802, in an address to the Danbury Baptists - Had the people, during the Revolution, had any suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle...At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect ... in this age there can be no substitute for Christianity. ... That was the religion of the founders of the Republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants ... The great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
House Judiciary Committee Report, March 27, 1854, after a one year study brought about by a suit to force the separation of church and state. - Challenges to the Constitutionality of the government being run by Christian principles continued throughout the late 1800s finally arrived at the Supreme Court. In the case of Reynolds v. United States, 1878, the court pulled out Jefferson’s speech in its entirety and confirmed that Jefferson also said that Christian principles were never to be separated from government. The Supreme Court used Jefferson’s speech for the next 15 years to make sure that Christian principles stayed part of government. It remained this way until 1947, when, in the first time in the Supreme Court’s history, the court used only eight words out of Jefferson’s speech. The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.
Everson v. Board of Education, 1947 - First time in the Supreme Court’s history, the court used only 8 words out of Jefferson’s speech. There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it. Dr. William James, The Father of Modern Psychology
- If this court doesn’t stop talking about separation of church and state, someone will think it is part of the Constitution
Bear v. Colmorgan, 1958 - The first separation of religious principles from public education. This is the case that removed school prayer. There were no precedents cited. The court did not quote previous legal cases or historical incidents. A new direction in the legal system - no longer constitutional.
One of the justices, in a stinging dissent, Engel v. Vitale, June 25, 1962 - It is unconstitutional for a student to pray aloud.
Reed v. Van Hoven, 1965 - The Court declared a four-line nursery rhyme unconstitutional because, although it did not contain the word “God”, it might cause someone to think it was talking about God.
DeCalv V. Espain (could not get the names exactly), 1967