This is the written ‘ government’ speech from an Act of the General Assembly passed in 1786. Written by Thomas Jefferson.
“An Act for establishing religious Freedom. Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time”
Okay, class, is the Almighty God referred to in this act any God other than the deity of the King James Bible?
So, does the reference to this author of our religion (which religion might that be?) make this an unconstitutional disestablishment of the official state church of Virginia?
Why is it that Thomas Jefferson never referred to ‘government speech’, but Sandra Day O’Connor did? Why don’t any of the Founding Fathers write or speak about ‘government’ speech?