Air Force Academy creates worship area for Pagans, Druids, and Wiccans

Also not in James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, written a few years before he drafted the First Amendment.A couple exerpts (do please read it in its entirety):

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1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considerd as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

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That last should really sting Buz, who has repeatedly expressed the desire for the majority to trample the rights of the minority.

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2. Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

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The earliest expression of the Wall of Separation that I know of. Written by the drafter of the First Amendment a few years before that draft. Remember the Radical Religious Right's mantra of the 1980's? Original intent.There are 13 more articles, much of which outline the corrupting influence of religion upon civil government and vice versa.

Oh, so you mean to say that the true Christians are the Jews?The Spanish Inquisition started in 1492. Spain had until then referred to as the Kingdom of Three Crowns, because it consisted of three major religious groups: Christians, Muslims, and Jews. It was in 1492 that the Christians succeeded in driving out the Muslims and then turned to eliminating the Jews with the Expulsion Act. Even though those Jews who converted were allowed to remain, the Christians did not trust the sincerity of such conversions and instituted the Inquisition as a way to verify it.It wasn't until 1517, a couple decades later, that the Reformation began, so they later also turned their attention to Protestant heretics. One humorous story to come out of the Inquisition was that of a Dutch merchant who was arrested on suspicion of being a Jew. I forget whether he was imprisoned for several months or two years before somebody finally decided to perform a cursory physical examination which confirmed that he was in fact not a Jew, whereupon he was deported for being a Protestant.BTW, the Spanish Inquisition finally ended in the mid-1830's.One