 Freethought of the Day |
January 1, 2009
There are 2 entries for this date: Wall of Separation Letter coined and Ouida. "Wall of Separation" Letter Coined On this date in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson coined the famous phrase describing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as erecting "a wall of separation between church and state." He used the phrase in his famous letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, who had asked him to explain the meaning of the First Amendment's phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." “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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
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President Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, January 1, 1802
On this date in 1839, Ouida, a woman novelist, animal rights activist and freethinker, was born. Nee Maria Louisa Rame, the British novelist rivaled Dickens, Browning and Elliot for salability on the Continent. Some actually speculated she might be George Eliot writing under yet another pseudonym. A passionate dog-lover, Ouida's enduring collection of stories, A Dog of Flanders, was recently turned into a movie. Her essay, "The Failure of Christianity," was published in 1895 in her book Views and Opinions. “Christianity is a formula: it is nothing more.”
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Ouida, "The Failure of Christianity," Views and Opinions (1895)
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