In his letter (June 26), Ed McCaffrey says that arguing for religious freedom will result in having even religious rights “diminished or eliminated,” like that isn’t already happening.

A school will prohibit the wearing of a cross but not a pagan pentagram. Tolerance is being pushed with intolerance toward those who should have the freedom to disagree. Try holding an after-hours Bible study in a school library.

McCaffrey opined about the intentions of the Constitution’s authors as he warned about arguments being used “as a battering ram against the wall of separation of church and state.” Sorry, but “separation of church and state” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut saying, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” That is where the phrase comes from.

Jefferson was defending the Bill of Rights, First Amendment to the Constitution, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” etc.

Read that again, because it diametrically opposes what’s being propagated today.

Believe it or not, Christians are being jailed for exercising those rights, right here in America.

David Theriault, Rumford

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