Church And State

I hear on a fairly regular basis people calling for a lifting of the ban on 'Prayer In School'. NEWS FLASH - Prayer has always been allowed in school. The school leading the students in prayer however violates the constitution. The 'Wall of Seperation' between church and state should be maintained for two reasons:

1. The Constitution says so.
2. Mixing Religion into the government is a phenomenally BAD idea. (I will present evidence of this momentarily).

I know at least a few of you are thinking that the 'Wall of Seperation' is a recent invention (because a year or two ago alot of people went on news shows and said it was.) and that our founding fathers didn't refer to the 'Wall' (same reason as above) but the person who coined the term 'Wall of separation between church and state' was in fact Thomas Jefferson. James Madison another of our founding fathers and pricipal author of the Constitution was a vocal church and state separatist. It wasn't uncommon when our country was young for a person to be singled out and arrested, or pilloried for being of a religious denomination different from that in the majority of the area they were in. Our founding fathers though they may have been religious did not want the church and the goverment to be involved with one another.

As for reason number two let me just list some of the notable countries in the world where church and state are strongly intertwined if not one and the same. Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, Israel. Before anyone says none of those is Christian let me add Ireland and Northern Ireland. As you can see not exactly the most peaceful places in the world. If that is what mingling chuch and state bring I'll pass thanks.