We’ve all heard of “separation of church and state,” but do we know what it means? Brad O’Leary joins Mike Farris today on Home School Heartbeat to discuss how this concept has been misunderstood.
Mike Farris:
Our Founding Fathers constructed our government on many Christian principles. But they also believed in something that we commonly call “separation of church and state.” These facts aren’t really antithetical as we often think, once we know what they really meant. Brad, how has this concept become misconstrued?
Brad O’Leary:
Well, we have to understand that there our Founding Fathers came from Europe, where a king or a prince or someone chose for them what religion they could believe in. So they were very particular about the fact that they didn’t want their government to have an official religion. And in fact in our early country there were a number of states that tried to have official religions. And the fight was to make sure we didn’t have one.
The fight was to protect religion from government, not to protect government from religion. And unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson was never for what many people say he was for. He wanted freedom, and freedom is recognizing all religions.
Mike:
Brad, those are great insights. We’ll talk more next time. I’m Mike Farris.
