Legal and Public Foundation
The United States Constitution addresses the issue of religion in two places: in the First Amendment, and the Article VI prohibition on religious tests as a condition for holding public office. The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" This provision was later expanded to state and local governments, through the Incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Religion In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words legal, public and/or foundation:
“Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“He believes without reservation that Kentucky is the garden spot of the world, and is ready to dispute with anyone who questions his claim. In his enthusiasm for his State he compares with the Methodist preacher whom Timothy Flint heard tell a congregation that Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.”
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a mans subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a womans subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature.”
—Susan B. Anthony (18201907)