Can Secularism Save America?

BuzzFlash Interviews Susan Jacoby, Author of Freethinkers

... Reading God into the Constitution is the exact opposite of strict constructionism. In fact, leaving God out of the Preamble to the Constitution – it was revolutionary. There had never been a government that legally separated church and state before, and it was very deliberate. The omission of God from the Constitution was debated at all of the state ratifying conventions about the Constitution before and when it was finally ratified.

And the Christian right at the time – the right-wing ministers – were very opposed and predicted that God would smash America for leaving Him out of the document. And by the way, this was a division then, too, between conservative and liberal religion, not only between conservative religious people and freethinkers, because religious dissidents also supported the separation of church and state strongly in the Constitution. And indeed, it was a coalition of freethinkers – of people like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine – and dissident Evangelicals – Baptists, for instance, who were then the minority religion in most states, who joined in this coalition to support the separation of church and state. How far we have come from that.