Rep. Chet Edwards – “I believe perhaps America’s greatest single contribution to the world from our experiment in democracy is our model of religious freedom and tolerance. The foundation of that religious freedom is the principle of separation of church and state, imbedded in the first 16 words of our Bill of Rights: ‘Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ In his letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut in 1802, Thomas Jefferson expressed his belief that the principle of church-state separation is one of the most sacred of our founding principles. Unfortunately, many Americans today have come to perceive that separation of church and state implies disrespect for religion. Nothing could be further from the truth as Jefferson stated over a century ago.”
