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Lawrence O'Donnell: Bible At Inauguration Is One Of 'Most Absurdest Traditions'

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Dark_Falcon1/12/2013 1:11:14 pm PST

re: #3 Destro

the concept as understood by the founding fathers was rooted in a Protestant doctrine that began as an anti-Papal sentiment.

Nonsense. Protestants did not invent the separation of church and state as part of some anti-papal sentiment. See Calvinist ruled city states, or Lutheran Germany where papal authority was just replaced with Protestant authority (and Luther endorsed persecution of emerging Christian sects like anti-baptists).

The American Founders lived 200 years after Luther and Calvin, and they derived their separation ideas from Protestant doctrines that had been originally formulated to counter the secular influence the Catholic Church often had in Continental Europe. The ideas were altered, though, by the desire of the Founders to ensure religious tolerance and thus avoid bloody acts of religious violence such as the Gordon Riots. So in this case separation was ‘rooted in older anti-Catholic ideas, but it grew beyond them.