"I have recently noticed a number of misexplanations of separation of church and state being spread by fundamentalists. 'It's not in the Constitution,' they cry. Actually, it is, even though the words 'separation of church and state' do not appear therein.
"The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is what separates church and state. The Founders were perfectly clear about what they were doing. It was put best by James Madison, in that magnificent eighteenth-cuntury prose of which we are no longer capable: The purpose of the separation of church and state 'is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.'
"And still does. In Bosnia, a considerable amount of that blood reportedly comes from Moslem virgins who are raped as a matter of policy by their Serbian Christian neighbors."
--Molly Ivins
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 28, 1993
Return to Notes, quotes and thoughts