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In December of 1801 the Danburry Baptists of Danburry, CT wrote a letter to then President Thomas Jefferson. In their letter they expressed concerns about members of the Congregationalist denomination gaining control in the government. The fear was not in regard to "religious" people gaining influence (by our standards almost all these men involved in politics would be branded as members of the radical religious right), but instead the worry was over whether or not the Congregationalists would eventually declare their denomination as the "official state religion
". This would mean that any other members of any other Christian denomination would be in violation of the law if they did not convert. To assure that the persecution suffered in Europe would not be realized here in the new world President Jefferson wrote back to the Danburry Baptists declaring that the first amendment had erected "a wall of separation between church and state" and that no official state religion could be established. The term religion in this context was still used to mean a denomination of the Christian church.
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In studying the practices of our government institutions from their beginning we can see very well that our founders were Christian and intended this nation to remain so. Look at the first constitutions of the original 13 states; there one will find the obvious emphasis on God and being Christian. The founders never intended for Christian principles to be separated from government. Through out most of its history the Supreme Court of this nation has upheld this interpretation of the first amendment. In 1878, in the case of Reynolds v United States, the Supreme Court made it unmistakably clear that an attack on Jesus Christ or on Christianity was equivalent to an attack upon the United States itself. This was a case where there was an attempt made to teach morality without the religious emphasis on Christianity, which had been incorporated in education from the beginning. The court case Church of the Holy Trinity v United States of 1892 is another example, where the Supreme Court sited 87 precedents to the fact that this is a Christian nation and that it was to remain so. But in 1947, in Everson v Board of Education, the Supreme Court had forgotten what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said "a wall of separation between church and state." Those eight words were taken out of their context, which created an entirely new meaning--the meaning we think of today. This new interpretation of the first amendment has been repeated so often and so strongly that it is very difficult for most people to even entertain the idea that this nation was ever founded on Christian principles, which brings us to the role of the use of misinformation.
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In 1946 a book about children was published about raising children. This book became very popular almost immediately upon release. At the time pediatricians had to recommend strict solutions to problems of the day. Young parents who lived in cities were cut off from their families and generations of practical knowledge learned in the slow paced country life. The busy city life made it hard on these parents who were eager to find help to their child rearing difficulties. Questions were being asked and answers had to be found. Solutions such as making strict dietary schedules were necessary decades earlier, until refrigeration was available to the mass public. However, the reasoning behind the idea that being shown affection by their parents would spoil children is still a mystery. All of these solutions (generated from the sophisticated and educated elite of the day, especially the new "science" of psychology) came from studies and supposed experts. One such expert was Dr. Benjamin Spock. His book is what taught the city dwelling population how to raise their children. Dr. Spock's opinions applied a more up to date method than the advice given by the "experts" of the day. Parents felt less harsh to their children while employing the advice of Dr. Spock. This is probably one of the main reasons why the people stopped taking care of their own lives and began relying on the experts to take care of problems for them. The new industries of the day made it difficult enough to take care of personal problems, but having poor communication with families made it even easier to ask an academic rather than one's own family or church, who had real experience in such matters. From now on the people would seek "expert" advice.
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This movement to seek advice from research and studies was only strengthened by an educational system designed to produce "cookie cutter" diplomas. This educational system taught students how and what to think, rather than teaching children to think for themselves. This lack of thinking skills in the mass population was quite obvious to those in power. The people could be controlled by misinformation, or at least controlled information. This new understanding of Jefferson's "wall" was being preached loudly and often; so much, in fact, that a Supreme Court judge in the 1958 case of Baer v Kolmorgen had to state that if government didn't stop talking about this separation of church and state the people would start to think it was in the constitution. He was right. Dr. Spock's book taught the people to rely on education so solve problems while the educational system grew further and further away from traditional Christian values. Dr. Spock did not at first advocate eliminating discipline from the upbringing of children, but with the lack of thinking skills in the population at large, people learned from his advice to reject traditional teachings. This meant the idea of punishing one's wrong doing was out of date; it was cruel and abusive. People decided they didn't need to teach their children right from wrong, they needed to understand their children instead. Showing compassion and building self-esteem and teaching tolerance was now more important than teaching children to think before they act. Feeling became more appropriate than thinking. Then in 1962, government finally took an open stand against God, and they told Him He is not welcome in our public schools. David Barton also shows research on the results of this case, Engel v Vital. In every moral category the United States sees a dramatic plummet. Academically the United States suffers terrible loss (today we call this the "dumbing down" effect of our public educational system). The United States even has the highest illiteracy rate of any industrialized nation. We have one of the poorest records of any industrial nation, but we have our separation of church and state. And we are now a nation of feminine logic.
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