Founding Fathers respond to Sali

In my last post I mentioned the ignorant comments made by Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) concerning Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate and a Muslim member of the House of Representatives.

In his comments he said:

“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” asserts Sali.

Well it seems some members of the Founding Fathers needed to respond.

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

John Adams – Letter to Thomas Jefferson

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will avail themselves for their own purposes.

Thomas Jefferson – Letter to Alexander von Humboldt December 6, 1813

The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.

James Madison – Letter to F.L. Schaeffer, December 3, 1821

Those three men would know better than Bill Sali what the Constitution means as they helped create it. It shows how ignorant Sali’s comments were.

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