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Old presidents and new theocrats.

Article Excerpt
On the editorial pages of U.S. newspapers and at sundry Web sites, proponents of an impregnable wall between church and state intermittently clash with modern theocrats (aka Christian fundamentalists) who would delve beneath the wall and, as Hamlet might say, "blow it at the moon." Whether the immediate provocation be placement of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and statehouses. Bible classes in public schools, school prayer, school vouchers, public display of the creche, tax exemptions for churches, federal funds for faith-based initiatives, or judicial interdiction against the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the new theocrats seek to undermine the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. A favorite ploy is to attribute Christianish remarks to the first U.S. presidents. Modified or wrenched from context, when not altogether spurious, the remarks are supposed to demonstrate that the most eminent founders of the nation sanctioned state furtherance of religion.

Hence, in his farewell address to the fledgling nation, George Washington, the theocrats often point out, warned that when the body politic is devoid of religious sentiment, the nation must suffer: "Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." On a similar count, John Adams is customarily cited: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." A local letter writer theocratized Washington...

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