The Congressional Prayer Caucus
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. I am so glad to be with you this evening.
So many people in Washington and in other parts of the country believe that it was the intent of the Founding Fathers to bleach from our society our religious beliefs, and you have heard others speak this evening that that is not the case. In particular, I would like to share with you, in the short time that we have remaining, the words of Thomas Jefferson from that famous letter to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, because everybody focuses on one phrase and not the entire letter.
He opens with salutations to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, and then begins the meat of the letter:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ``make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the Nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
Now, the next paragraph--the closing paragraph--of the letter is very instructive because the man who some now say wanted to bleach religion out ends the letter as President of the United States as follows:
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.
Obviously, it was never his intent to bleach out of our society religion, and the Statute for Religious Freedom today still stands on the wall of the House of Delegates where you and I both served.
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