Church and State Separation Quotes

When religious leaders get involved in elections, it is usually with a reactionary social agenda.

Under President Obama, the IRS formed a committee to aggressively go after churches and other religious organizations using the Johnson Amendment of 1954 to limit their free speech.

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects.

To me there's nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn't apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn't work.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

I do not speak for my church on public matters—and the church does not speak for me.

What I have said is that I think the federal government and we as a society have come too far in trying to separate good organizations that perform good functions for people just based on the fact one has a religious association and one doesn't.

The state in the matter of drugs should not, any more than in the matter of sex, act as the secret agent for the agenda of the church.

I just think Texas and that whole Bible Belt section is so, like, corporate. And I don't agree with organized religion in that respect.

The Christian Coalition does not speak for most Christians. It tries to speak for its membership.

We should exclude murderous atheists, who would pull down Church and state; religion and God; morality and happiness .... When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces; I see their insidious purposes; I see that the object of all their cajoling is—blood! I now warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy every thing that is good here, and to establish immorality and murder by precept and example.

Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar appropriated for their support shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools. Resolve that neither the state nor nation, nor both combined, shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land of opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical dogmas. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government.

There’s only one agency in the country that can determine whether you are a religion or not and that is the Internal Revenue Service, an organization very ill-equipped to make such distinctions.