It's not necessarily the Constitution that governs the separation of states from religion, or vice versa, rather it's the interpretations handed down by the US Supreme Courts over the years. But are their decisions Crap? I don't necessarily view the opinions of the US Supreme Court as crap. I don't necessarily or always agree with their decisions, but like their recent decision in our favor re: the Second Amendment, it is what governs us all.
It's decision in
Reynolds v United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878), held that the courts cannot govern beliefs but they can govern actions, preventing religion from being "practiced" but not believed, as in polygamy, [maybe even sacrifice.] Therefore, governments can only arrest us for we do, not what we think. That's the separation that has to be followed. We are free to believe that there might be a Flying Spaghetti Monster but we cannot can be arrested for believing it, only for what we might do about it.
In a series of cases beginning with the next case, the separation rulings have been further defined and refined. The Supreme Court's ruling in
McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948), paraphrased, reads that a state cannot consistently, with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects. Furthermore, the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. I think that is pretty self-explanatory.
Check
Link Removed for other cases and citations and information. There have been dozens if not hundreds of cases further expanding upon the premise of "the separation of church & state."
Says me, not looking for dissension or hurt or a fight or whatever, only for information.[/QUOT
# "The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
# "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
