Re \u201cThe downside of a bridge between church and state\u201d (July 14): Kenneth Seeskin cites excellent examples of religious wars, disagreements and cases of intolerance between religious sects throughout history. He forgot to mention the wars and strife between the Roman Catholic crown in France and the Protestant Huguenots. For much of the 17th century in France, it was nothing but bloodshed, massacres and horror between these two Christian sects.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t need more reasons to fight each other in America \u2014 keep the wall between the state and religion, and let\u2019s not make all the same mistakes over and over again. History has value and lessons.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Chet Chebegia, San Marcos<\/p>\n
Kenneth Seeskin misunderstands Thomas Jefferson\u2019s \u201cwall of separation\u201d between church and state. Citing the First Amendment, Jefferson invoked \u201ca wall of separation of church and state\u201d not to prevent the influence of religion in government, but rather to protect \u201cthe free exercise\u201d of religion from government interference. President Jefferson, in his Jan. 1, 1802, letter to the Danbury Baptists, added the phrase \u201cthus building a wall of separation between Church and State\u201d to interpret the First Amendment\u2019s religious freedom clause. Then he explained what he meant: \u201cadhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience.\u201d Two days later, Jefferson deliberately started attending Christian worship services in the House of Representatives and continued to do so faithfully for the remainder of his presidency, as did his successor, James Madison.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Howard R. Killion, Oceanside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cThe downside of a bridge between church and state\u201d (July 14): Kenneth Seeskin cites excellent examples of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-402395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}