In June 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and thus the principle of the Separation of Church and State.

About a year later, the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that the claimant, Michael Newdow, did not have the grounds to file suit on behalf of his daughter since he did not have custody.

Although the Supreme Court discarded the case, they did not dispose of the issue. This article reviews the history of the Separation of Church and State idea in America.

The First Amendment

When critics of the Separation of Church and State insist that the phrase never appears in the Constitution, they are correct. The First Amendment to the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Legal scholars refer to this wording as the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, and since they often conflict it is the job of America's judges to reconcile differences.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was our third United States president and the author of the Declaration of Independence. He is remembered well because he wrote frequently and eloquently about a number of topics related to the American ideal.

Jefferson was not present at the writing of the United States Constitution, but was instead in Paris on a diplomatic mission. Still, a strong case can be made that his thought process was present because his protégé, James Madison, was instrumental in bringing the Constitution to fruition.

Debates over the Separation of Church and State often turn on whether or not the Founding Fathers were Christian, as we now understand it, but it is impossible to classify them as a group as they had a variety of deeply held religious beliefs. Patrick Henry and John Adams certainly were men of faith. Thomas Jefferson most certainly was not.

Jefferson's father, Peter Jefferson, died when Thomas was 14 and the future President of the United States was sent to study under an arrogant clergyman named James Maury. We do not know much about Jefferson's relationship with Maury, but we do know that by the time he reached college Jefferson wanted nothing more to do with faith.

Instead, Jefferson began subscribing to enlightenment thinking, which is based on the idea that all problems can be solved by relying on the best and brightest among us. Jefferson certainly considered Jesus to be among the best and the brightest, but he did not accept His divinity. Eventually, Jefferson republished his own New Testament, known as the Jefferson Bible, which removed any references to the divinity of Jesus.