thanks, according to our original understanding of the US constitution it is perfectly allowable and reasonable for the various states to pick and choose what religious organizations can run a taxpayer funded school and what can't. According to modern sensibilities, if we fund the catholics and the presbyterians and the jews and the fundamentalist christians, then we have to fund the wahabis and the devil worshopers.
When Thomas Jefferson was president of Univ of Virginia he required everyone to study theology, in fact that was a large portion of what they studied. They had 7 christian traditions to choose from. That's what Tom Jefferson considered freedom of religion. This was all taxpayer funded.
When public schools were first created in the very early 1800's in New England every parent was required to send their kids to public schools. When they said public schools they meant schools funded by taxpayers. These public schools were all run by churches. They were funded on a per-child basis, the more kids attending, the more funding you got. Parents were merely required to select the school and state would fund it with taxpayer money.
We did away with this original concept of public schools in mid-1800's because of intolerance for catholics.
When Thomas Jefferson was president a citizen wrote him a letter and asked him the state of Pennsylvania could establish Quakerism as the state religion as the citizen favored. Jefferson wrote back and said that certainly if the authorities chose to declare the quaker religion as the state religion, then they were allowed to do that because the constitution provided a 'wall between church and state' to allow that. This is the original source for that phrase. Jefferson used it to describe the exact opposite of what liberals today use it for.
Americans wake up!!! Your children are being destroyed in public schools by people whose sentiments are marxist.
To: Red Jones
When public schools were first created in the very early 1800's in New England every parent was required to send their kids to public schools. When they said public schools they meant schools funded by taxpayers. These public schools were all run by churches. They were funded on a per-child basis, the more kids attending, the more funding you got.
That's news to me. Do you mean financed by the town? The first state-wide compulsory attendance laws were passed in Massachusetts but that was somewhere around 1850.
To: Red Jones
When I was a student at Mr. Jefferson's university in the 70's, the chapel on the grounds could not be used for religious purposes because that was considered to violate the separation of church and state. I'm not sure what the status of it is today.
posted on 09/27/2002 12:31:51 PM PDT
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