The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
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Faith-Based Charities Unconstitutional, says the father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights

[Editor's Note: someone should send this to Bush and those who are pulling his strings, or better yet the opposition, or is there none anymore?]
Researched by Jim Allison

February 21, 1811

Veto Messages

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

Having examined and considered the bill entitled "An act incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia," I now return the bill to the House of Representatives, in which it originated, with the following objections:

Because the bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution of the United States which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'' The bill enacts into and establishes by law sundry rules and proceedings relative purely to the organization and polity of the church incorporated, and comprehending even the election and removal of the minister of the same, so that no change could be made therein by the particular society or by the general church of which it is a member, and whose authority it recognizes. this particular church, therefore, would so far be a religious establishment by law, a legal force and sanction being given to certain articles in its constitution and administration. Nor can it be considered that the articles thus established are to be taken as the descriptive criteria only of the corporate identity of the society, inasmuch as this identity must depend on other characteristics, as the regulations established are generally unessential and alterable according to the principles and canons by which churches of that denomination govern themselves, and as the injunctions and prohibitions contained in the regulations would be enforced by the penal consequences applicable to a violation of them according to the local law.

[Emphasis added]Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, an authority which, being altogether superfluous if the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.

James Madison.

Source of Information: A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. II, Bureau of National Literature, NY, pp 474-475

Editor's Note: Madison vetoed the legislation because it crossed the line of separation between church and state and thus would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.

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