Last time I reviewed William Martin’s comments on John Adams’s views on religion and government. Here I link to three related articles that Martin wrote for Opposing Views.
First Martin reviews Jefferson’s famous letter to the the Danbury Baptist Association in which he praises the First Amendment as “building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Martin also further discusses the evolving views of James Madison, who also endorsed “the total separation of the church from the state.”
Later, Martin reviews:
During… the Civil War, a group of prominent churchmen calling themselves the National Reform Association began pushing for a Constitutional amendment that would amount to rewriting the preamble “acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, The Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the Nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government…”
Neither Lincoln nor Congress took no action on the proposal, and subsequent efforts likewise went nowhere.