Right wing, wrong message

After reading the letter by Will

am Felsman in your Dec. 29 edi

ion, I feel I had to write to defend our founding fathers. Separation of church and state is a historical fact and a cornerstone of our democacy.

In 1819 James Madison, the fa

her of the Constitution, wrote “the number, the industry and the mo

ality of the priesthood and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church and state.”

In a letter to John Adams in 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was part of the common law.”

Or perhaps we should consider the Barbary Treaties authored under the Adams administration in 1796. Article 11 states “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

If the words of the founding fathers are not enough, let’s consider Supreme Court rulings for the past 200 years, such as the 2003 Supreme Court case in which Judge Roy Moore was ordered to remove a large monument of the 10 Commandments from his court because, in the words of the court, “it violated the separation of church and state.” There are thousands of like examples that prove separation of church and state is the law of the land and was intended to be by the founding fathers.

Let me finish by saying I am not an atheist, as Mr. Felsman claims that people with my views are. He should perhaps consider the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said those who insist on loud public displays of prayer are not his followers and the true followers are those who pray quietly in their homes.

I am a practicing Christian here in the Conejo Valley and am active in church programs. I also am a proud American that supports the vision for our country that the founding fathers had. In my life, the Bible and the Constitution are the two greatest documents and it bothers me to see either of them misrepresented. Bob McPherson Oak Park