I highly doubt Jefferson was cooking up the Freedom of Religion clause for the future benefit of what he would consider bizarre religions of the orient, pagans, or satanism/witchery.
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“I highly doubt”
“Jefferson was cooking up the Freedom of Religion clause for the future benefit of what he would consider bizarre religions of the orient, pagans, or satanism/witchery.”
Doesn’t matter a god fucking damn if he did or didn’t. The Constitution has moved on without him. Every SCOTUS decision IS the Constitution, so they all count.
That may have been true of witchcraft at the time, less than a century after Salem. Now, if you recognize Wicca as a religion, good luck with that.
Yeah, doubts are easy to clear with a bit of light reading. Jefferson’s personal Qur’an is in the Library of Congress if you want to check it out. Worst he had to say was that the religion stifled free inquiry which is exactly the same thing he said about the rapidly splintering sects of Christianity that all despise each other. As personally devout as he was to his own set of beliefs organized religion of any kind seemed very much to irk him as it was a frequently exploited means to subvert the will of the common people and even cause them to turn against one another.
“The priests indeed have heretofore thought proper to ascribe to me religious, or rather antireligious sentiments, of their own fabric, but such as soothed their resentments against the Act of Virginia for establishing religious freedom. They wished him to be thought Atheist, Deist, or Devil, who could advocate freedom from but I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests. ”
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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