document_title: Separation of church and state in the United States

question_text: where does it talk about separation of church and state in the constitution

question_tokens: where does it talk about separation of church and state in the constitution

text: Separation of church and state in the United States

text: Early history[edit]

text: Many early immigrant groups traveled to America to worship freely, particularly after the English Civil War and religious conflict in France and Germany.[9] They included nonconformists like the Puritans, who were Protestant Christians fleeing religious persecution from the Anglican King of England. Despite a common background, the groups' views on religious toleration were mixed. While some such as Roger Williams of Rhode Island and William Penn of Pennsylvania ensured the protection of religious minorities within their colonies, others like the Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony had established churches. The Dutch colony of New Netherland established the Dutch Reformed Church and outlawed all other worship, though enforcement was sparse. Religious conformity was desired partly for financial reasons: the established Church was responsible for poverty relief, putting dissenting churches at a significant disadvantage. This, along with many other statements should be footnoted, as it seems more like an opinion than a fact.

text: Former state churches in British North America[edit]

text: Catholic colonies[edit]

text:
When New France was transferred to Great Britain in 1763, the Catholic Church remained under toleration, but Huguenots were allowed entrance where they had formerly been banned from settlement by Parisian authorities.
The Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Catholicism. Under their leadership many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. However, the colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions which antagonized the others. On several occasions low-church dissenters led insurrections which temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to demands to revoke the original royal charter. In 1701 the Church of England was proclaimed, and in the course of the eighteenth century Maryland Catholics were first barred from public office, then disenfranchised, although not all of the laws passed against them (notably laws restricting property rights and imposing penalties for sending children to be educated in foreign Catholic institutions) were enforced, and some Catholics even continued to hold public office.
Spanish Florida was ceded to Great Britain in 1763, the British divided Florida into two colonies. Both East and West Florida continued a policy of toleration for the Catholic Residents.

text: Protestant colonies[edit]

text:
The colony of Plymouth was founded by Pilgrims, English Dissenters or Separatists, Calvinists.
The colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, and New Hampshire were founded by Puritan, Calvinist, Protestants.
New Netherland was founded by Dutch Reformed Calvinists.
The colonies of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were officially Church of England.

text: Colonies with no established church[edit]

text:
The Province of Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers, but the colony never had an established church.
West Jersey, also founded by Quakers, prohibited any establishment.
Delaware Colony
The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, founded by religious dissenters, is widely regarded as the first polity to grant religious freedom to all its citizens.

text: Tabular summary[edit]

text:
Colony
Denomination
Disestablished1

Connecticut
Congregational
1818

Georgia
Church of England
17892

Maryland
Catholic/Church of England
1701/1776

Massachusetts
Congregational
1780 (in 1833 state funding suspended)3

New Brunswick
Church of England

New Hampshire
Congregational
17904

Newfoundland
Church of England

North Carolina
Church of England
17765

Nova Scotia
Church of England
1850

Prince Edward Island
Church of England

South Carolina
Church of England
1790

Canada West
Church of England
1854

West Florida
Church of England
N/A6,7

East Florida
Church of England
N/A6,7

Virginia
Church of England
17868

West Indies
Church of England
1868

text: ^Note 1: In several colonies, the establishment ceased to exist in practice at the Revolution, about 1776;[10] this is the date of permanent legal abolition.

text: ^Note 2: in 1789 the Georgia Constitution was amended as follows: "Article IV. Section 10. No person within this state shall, upon any pretense, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in any manner agreeable to his own conscience, nor be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall he ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rate, for the building or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or hath voluntarily engaged to do. No one religious society shall ever be established in this state, in preference to another; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles."

text: ^Note 3: From 1780 Massachusetts had a system which required every man to belong to a church, and permitted each church to tax its members, but forbade any law requiring that it be of any particular denomination. This was objected to, as in practice establishing the Congregational Church, the majority denomination, and was abolished in 1833.

text: ^Note 4: Until 1877 the New Hampshire Constitution required members of the State legislature to be of the Protestant religion.

text: ^Note 5: The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 disestablished the Anglican church, but until 1835 the NC Constitution allowed only Protestants to hold public office. From 1835 to 1876 it allowed only Christians (including Catholics) to hold public office. Article VI, Section 8 of the current NC Constitution forbids only atheists from holding public office.[11] Such clauses were held by the United States Supreme Court to be unenforceable in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, when the court ruled unanimously that such clauses constituted a religious test incompatible with First and Fourteenth Amendment protections.

text: ^Note 6: Religious tolerance for Catholics with an established Church of England was policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule.

text: ^Note 7: In Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War, the British ceded both East and West Florida back to Spain (see Spanish Florida).

text: ^Note 8: Tithes for the support of the Anglican Church in Virginia were suspended in 1776, and never restored. 1786 is the date of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which prohibited any coercion to support any religious body.

text: Colonial support for separation[edit]

text: The Flushing Remonstrance shows support for separation of church and state as early as the mid-17th century, stating their opposition to religious persecution of any sort: "The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, so love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage." The document was signed December 27, 1657 by a group of English citizens in America who were affronted by persecution of Quakers and the religious policies of the Governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant had formally banned all religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church from being practiced in the colony, in accordance with the laws of the Dutch Republic. The signers indicated their "desire therefore in this case not to judge lest we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master."[12] Stuyvesant fined the petitioners and threw them in prison until they recanted. However, John Bowne allowed the Quakers to meet in his home. Bowne was arrested, jailed, and sent to the Netherlands for trial; the Dutch court exonerated Bowne.

text: New York Historical Society President and Columbia University Professor of History Kenneth T. Jackson describes the Flushing Remonstrance as "the first thing that we have in writing in the United States where a group of citizens attests on paper and over their signature the right of the people to follow their own conscience with regard to God - and the inability of government, or the illegality of government, to interfere with that."[13]

text: Given the wide diversity of opinion on Christian theological matters in the newly independent American States, the Constitutional Convention believed a government sanctioned (established) religion would disrupt rather than bind the newly formed union together. George Washington wrote a letter in 1790 to the country's first Jewish congregation, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island to state:

text: Allowing rights and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.[14]

text: There were also opponents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773, Isaac Backus, a prominent Baptist minister in New England, wrote against a state sanctioned religion, saying: "Now who can hear Christ declare, that his kingdom is, not of this world, and yet believe that this blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him?" He also observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." Thomas Jefferson's influential Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was enacted in 1786, five years before the Bill of Rights.

text: Most Anglican ministers, and many Anglicans, were Loyalists. The Anglican establishment, where it had existed, largely ceased to function during the American Revolution, though the new States did not formally abolish and replace it until some years after the Revolution.

text: Jefferson, Madison, and the "wall of separation"[edit]

text: The phrase "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist theologian Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, in his 1644 book The Bloody Tenent of Persecution.[15][16] The phrase was later used by Thomas Jefferson as a description of the First Amendment and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government, in an 1802 letter[17] to the Danbury Baptists (a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the Congregationalist church in Connecticut):

text: 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.

text: Jefferson's letter was in reply to a letter[18] that he had received from the Danbury Baptist Association dated October 7, 1801. In an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists, Jefferson used the same theme:

text: We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.

text: Jefferson and James Madison's conceptions of separation have long been debated. Jefferson refused to issue Proclamations of Thanksgiving sent to him by Congress during his presidency, though he did issue a Thanksgiving and Prayer proclamation as Governor of Virginia.[19][20] Madison issued four religious proclamations while President,[21] but vetoed two bills on the grounds they violated the first amendment.[22] On the other hand, both Jefferson and Madison attended religious services at the Capitol.[23] Years before the ratification of the Constitution, Madison contended "Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body."[24] After retiring from the presidency, Madison wrote of "total separation of the church from the state."[25] " "Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States," Madison wrote,[26] and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States."[27] In a letter to Edward Livingston Madison further expanded, "We are teaching the world the great truth that Govts. do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Govt."[28] Madison's original draft of the Bill of Rights had included provisions binding the States, as well as the Federal Government, from an establishment of religion, but the House did not pass them.[citation needed]

text: Jefferson's opponents said his position was the destruction and the governmental rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature.[29] In setting up the University of Virginia, Jefferson encouraged all the separate sects to have preachers of their own, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.[30] Some have argued that this arrangement was "fully compatible with Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state;"[31] however, others point to Jefferson's support for a scheme in which students at the university would attend religious worship each morning as evidence that his views were not consistent with strict separation.[32] Still other scholars, such as Mark David Hall, attempt to sidestep the whole issue by arguing that American jurisprudence focuses too narrowly on this one Jeffersonian letter while failing to account for other relevant history[33]

text: Jefferson's letter entered American jurisprudence in the 1878 Mormon polygamy case Reynolds v. U.S., in which the court cited Jefferson and Madison, seeking a legal definition for the word religion. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Johnson Field cited Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists to state that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order."[34] Considering this, the court ruled that outlawing polygamy was constitutional.

text: Patrick Henry, Massachusetts, and Connecticut[edit]

text: Jefferson and Madison's approach was not the only one taken in the eighteenth century. Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom was drafted in opposition to a bill, chiefly supported by Patrick Henry, which would permit any Virginian to belong to any denomination, but which would require him to belong to some denomination and pay taxes to support it. Similarly, the Constitution of Massachusetts originally provided that "no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience... provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship," (Article II) but also that:

text: the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily. And the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend. (Article III)

text: Since, in practice, this meant that the decision of who was taxable for a particular religion rested in the hands of the selectmen, usually Congregationalists, this system was open to abuse. It was abolished in 1833. The intervening period is sometimes referred to as an "establishment of religion" in Massachusetts.

text: The Duke of York had required that every community in his new lands of New York and New Jersey support some church, but this was more often Dutch Reformed, Quaker or Presbyterian, than Anglican. Some chose to support more than one church. He also ordained that the tax-payers were free, having paid his local tax, to choose their own church. The terms for the surrender of New Amsterdam had provided that the Dutch would have liberty of conscience, and the Duke, as an openly divine-right Catholic, was no friend of Anglicanism. The first Anglican minister in New Jersey arrived in 1698, though Anglicanism was more popular in New York.[35]

text: Connecticut had a real establishment of religion. Its citizens did not adopt a constitution at the Revolution, but rather amended their Charter to remove all references to the British Government. As a result, the Congregational Church continued to be established, and Yale College, at that time a Congregational institution, received grants from the State until Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 partly because of this issue.

text: Test acts[edit]

text: The absence of an establishment of religion did not necessarily imply that all men were free to hold office. Most colonies had a Test Act, and several states retained them for a short time. This stood in contrast to the Federal Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the employment of any religious test for Federal office, and which through the Fourteenth Amendment later extended this prohibition to the States.

text: For example, the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 provides liberty of conscience in much the same language as Massachusetts (similarly forbidding payment of "taxes, tithes or other payments" contrary to conscience). It then provides:

text: That there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow subjects.[36]

text: This would permit a Test Act, but did not require one.

text: The original charter of the Province of East Jersey had restricted membership in the Assembly to Christians; the Duke of York was fervently Catholic, and the proprietors of Perth Amboy, New Jersey were Scottish Catholic peers. The Province of West Jersey had declared, in 1681, that there should be no religious test for office. An oath had also been imposed on the militia during the French and Indian War requiring them to abjure the pretensions of the Pope, which may or may not have been applied during the Revolution. That law was replaced by 1799.

text: The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 provided:

text: And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:

text: And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State.

text: Again, it provided in general that all tax-paying freemen and their sons shall be able to vote, and that no "man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship."

text: The U.S. Constitution[edit]

text: Article 6[edit]

text: Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". Prior to the adoption of the Bill of Rights, this was the only mention of religion in the Constitution.

text: The First Amendment[edit]

text: The first amendment to the US Constitution states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" The two parts, known as the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause" respectively, form the textual basis for the Supreme Court's interpretations of the "separation of church and state" doctrine.[37] Three central concepts were derived from the 1st Amendment which became America's doctrine for church-state separation: no coercion in religious matters, no expectation to support a religion against one's will, and religious liberty encompasses all religions. In sum, citizens are free to embrace or reject a faith, any support for religion - financial or physical - must be voluntary, and all religions are equal in the eyes of the law with no special preference or favoritism.[38]

text: The First Congress' deliberations show that its understanding of the separation of church and state differed sharply from that of their contemporaries in Europe.[citation needed] As 19th century Union Theological Seminary historian Philip Schaff observed:

text: The American separation of church and state rests upon respect for the church; the [European anticlerical] separation, on indifference and hatred of the church, and of religion itself…. The constitution did not create a nation, nor its religion and institutions. It found them already existing, and was framed for the purpose of protecting them under a republican form of government, in a rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.[citation needed]

text: An August 15, 1789 entry in Madison's papers indicates he intended for the establishment clause to prevent the government imposition of religious beliefs on individuals. The entry says: "Mr. Madison said he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience. ..."[39]

text: Some legal scholars, such as John Baker of LSU, theorize that Madison's initial proposed language—that Congress should make no law regarding the establishment of a "national religion"—was rejected by the House, in favor of the more general "religion" in an effort to appease the Anti-Federalists. To both the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists, the very word "national" was a cause for alarm because of the experience under the British crown.[40] During the debate over the establishment clause, Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts took issue with Madison's language regarding whether the government was a national or federal government (in which the states retained their individual sovereignty), which Baker suggests compelled Madison to withdraw his language from the debate.

text: Following the argument between Madison and Gerry, Rep. Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire proposed language stating that, "Congress shall make no laws touching religion or the rights of conscience." This raised an uproar from members, such as Rep. Benjamin Huntingdon of Connecticut and Rep. Peter Sylvester of New York, who worried the language could be used to harm religious practice.

text: Others, such as Rep. Roger Sherman of Connecticut, believed the clause was unnecessary because the original Constitution only gave Congress stated powers, which did not include establishing a national religion. Anti-Federalists such as Rep. Thomas Tucker of South Carolina moved to strike the establishment clause completely because it could preempt the religious clauses in the state constitutions. However, the Anti-Federalists were unsuccessful in persuading the House of Representatives to drop the clause from the first amendment.

text: The Senate went through several more narrowly targeted versions before reaching the contemporary language. One version read, "Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others, nor shall freedom of conscience be infringed," while another read, "Congress shall make no law establishing one particular religious denomination in preference to others." Ultimately, the Senate rejected the more narrowly targeted language.

text: At the time of the passage of the Bill of Rights, many states acted in ways that would now be held unconstitutional. All of the early official state churches were disestablished by 1833 (Massachusetts), including the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut. It is commonly accepted that, under the doctrine of Incorporation—which uses the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to hold the Bill of Rights applicable to the states—these state churches could not be reestablished today.

text: Yet the provisions of state constitutions protected religious liberty, particularly the so-called freedom on conscience. During the nineteenth century (and before the incorporation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution through the Fourteenth Amendment), litigants turned to these provisions to challenge Sunday laws (blue laws), bible-reading in schools, and other ostensibly religious regulations.[41]

text: The 14th Amendment[edit]

text: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. It includes the due process and equal protection clauses among others. The amendment introduces the concept of incorporation of all relevant federal rights against the states. While it has not been fully implemented, the doctrine of incorporation has been used to ensure, through the Due Process Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause, the application of most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to the states.

text: The incorporation of the First Amendment establishment clause in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education has impacted the subsequent interpretation of the separation of church and state in regard to the state governments.[42] Although upholding the state law in that case, which provided for public busing to private religious schools, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment establishment clause was fully applicable to the state governments. A more recent case involving the application of this principle against the states was Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994).

text: The "Separation" principle and the Supreme Court[edit]

text: Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878).[43] In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, "The word 'religion' is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted." The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the "separation" paragraph from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."

text: The centrality of the "separation" concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the Bill of Rights to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

text: While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge and Justice Robert H. Jackson) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a "wall between church and state" or a "separation of Church from State": their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: "Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth." Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that "[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters."

text: In 1962, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of officially sponsored prayer or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents prior to the Court's decision consisted of: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.") As the Court stated:

text: The petitioners contend, among other things, that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents' prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention, since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.

text: The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America."[44] The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, objected to the court's embrace of the "wall of separation" metaphor: "I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the "wall of separation," a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."

text: In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court considered an Arkansas law that made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory in any school or university that received public funds. The court's opinion, written by Justice Abe Fortas, ruled that the Arkansas law violated "the constitutional prohibition of state laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." The court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and that "[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them." [45]

text:
Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

 Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her opinion on the 2005 Ten Commandments ruling.[46]

tag: div

text: In Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court determined that a Pennsylvania state policy of reimbursing the salaries and related costs of teachers of secular subjects in private religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. The court's decision argued that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable," the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."

text: Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion.[47] (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause.

text: In 2002, a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in a California public school was unconstitutional, even when students were not compelled to recite it, due to the inclusion of the phrase "under God." In reaction to the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, both houses of Congress passed measures reaffirming their support for the pledge, and condemning the panel's ruling.[48] The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was ultimately overturned in June 2004, solely on procedural grounds not related to the substantive constitutional issue. Rather, a five-justice majority held that Newdow, a non-custodial parent suing on behalf of his daughter, lacked standing to sue.

text: When the Louisiana state legislature passed a law requiring public school biology teachers to give Creationism and Evolution equal time in the classroom, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was intended to advance a particular religion, and did not serve the secular purpose of improved scientific education.[49] (See also: Creation and evolution in public education)

text: The display of the Ten Commandments as part of courthouse displays was considered in a group of cases decided in summer of 2005, including McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry. While parties on both sides hoped for a reformulation or clarification of the Lemon test, the two rulings ended with narrow 5–4 and opposing decisions,[vague] with Justice Stephen Breyer the swing vote.

text: On December 20, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in the case of ACLU v. Mercer County that the continued display of the Ten Commandments as part of a larger display on American legal traditions in a Kentucky courthouse was allowed, because the purpose of the display (educating the public on American legal traditions) was secular in nature.[50] In ruling on the Mount Soledad cross controversy on May 3, 2006, however, a federal judge ruled that the cross on public property on Mount Soledad must be removed.[51]

text: In what will be the case is Town of Greece v. Galloway, 12-696, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding whether prayers at town meetings, which are allowed, must allow various faiths to lead prayer, or whether the prayers can be predominately Christian.[52] On May 5, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Town of Greece by holding that the U.S. Constitution not only allows for prayer at government meetings, but also for sectarian prayers like predominately Christian prayers.[53]

text: The Treaty of Tripoli[edit]

text: In 1797, the United States Senate ratified a treaty with Tripoli that stated in Article 11:

text: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[54]

text: Interpretive controversies[edit]

text: Some scholars and organizations disagree with the notion of "separation of church and state", or the way the Supreme Court has interpreted the constitutional limitation on religious establishment.[55] Such critics generally argue that the phrase misrepresents the textual requirements of the Constitution, while noting that many aspects of church and state were intermingled at the time the Constitution was ratified. These critics argue that the prevalent degree of separation of church and state could not have been intended by the constitutional framers. Some of the intermingling between church and state include religious references in official contexts, and such other founding documents as the United States Declaration of Independence, which references the idea of a "Creator" and "Nature's God", though these references did not ultimately appear in the Constitution nor do they mention any particular religious view of a "Creator" or "Nature's God."

text: These critics of the modern separation of church and state also note the official establishment of religion in several of the states at the time of ratification, to suggest that the modern incorporation of the Establishment Clause as to state governments goes against the original constitutional intent.[citation needed] The issue is complex, however, as the incorporation ultimately bases on the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, at which point the first amendment's application to the state government was recognized.[56] Many of these constitutional debates relate to the competing interpretive theories of originalism versus modern, progressivist theories such as the doctrine of the Living Constitution. Other debates center on the principle of the law of the land in America being defined not just by the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, but also by legal precedence, making an accurate reading of the Constitution subject to the mores and values of a given era, and rendering the concept of historical revisionism irrelevant when discussing the Constitution.

text: The "religious test" clause has been interpreted to cover both elected officials and appointed ones, career civil servants as well as political appointees. Religious beliefs or the lack of them have therefore not been permissible tests or qualifications with regard to federal employees since the ratification of the Constitution. Seven states, however, have language included in their Bill of Rights, Declaration of Rights, or in the body of their constitutions that require state office-holders to have particular religious beliefs, though some of these have been successfully challenged in court. These states are Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Tennessee.[57]

text: The required beliefs of these clauses include belief in a Supreme Being and belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. (Tennessee Constitution Article IX, Section 2 is one such example.) Some of these same states specify that the oath of office include the words "so help me God." In some cases these beliefs (or oaths) were historically required of jurors and witnesses in court. At one time, such restrictions were allowed under the doctrine of states' rights; today they are deemed to be in violation of the federal First Amendment, as applied to the states via the 14th amendment, and hence unconstitutional and unenforceable.

text: While sometimes questioned as possible violations of separation, the appointment of official chaplains for government functions, voluntary prayer meetings at the Department of Justice outside of duty hours, voluntary prayer at meals in U.S. armed forces, inclusion of the (optional) phrase "so help me God" in the oaths for many elected offices, FBI agents, etc., have been held not to violate the First Amendment, since they fall within the realm of free exercise of religion.[citation needed]

text: Relaxed zoning rules and special parking privileges for churches, the tax-free status of church property, the fact that Christmas is a federal holiday, etc., have also been questioned, but have been considered examples of the governmental prerogative in deciding practical and beneficial arrangements for the society. The national motto "In God We Trust" has been challenged as a violation, but the Supreme Court has ruled that ceremonial deism is not religious in nature. A circuit court ruling affirmed Ohio's right to use as its motto a passage from the Bible, "With God, all things are possible", because it displayed no preference for a particular religion.[58]

text: Jeffries and Ryan (2001) argue that the modern concept of separation of church and state dates from the mid-twentieth century rulings of the Supreme Court. The central point, they argue, was a constitutional ban against aid to religious schools, followed by a later ban on religious observance in public education. Jeffries and Ryan argue that these two propositions—that public aid should not go to religious schools and that public schools should not be religious—make up the separationist position of the modern Establishment Clause.

text: Jeffries and Ryan argue that no-aid position drew support from a coalition of separationist opinion. Most important was "the pervasive secularism that came to dominate American public life," which sought to confine religion to a private sphere. Further, the ban against government aid to religious schools was supported before 1970 by most Protestants (and most Jews), who opposed aid to religious schools, which were mostly Catholic at the time. After 1980, however, anti-Catholic sentiment has diminished among mainline Protestants, and the crucial coalition of public secularists and Protestant churches has collapsed. While mainline Protestant denominations are more inclined towards strict separation of church and state, much evangelical opinion has now largely deserted that position. As a consequence, strict separationism is opposed today by members of many Protestant faiths, even perhaps eclipsing the opposition of Roman Catholics.[citation needed]

text: Critics of the modern concept of the "separation of church and state" argue that it is untethered to anything in the text of the constitution and is contrary to the conception of the phrase as the Founding Fathers understood it. Philip Hamburger, Columbia Law school professor and prominent critic of the modern understanding of the concept, maintains that the modern concept, which deviates from the constitutional establishment clause jurisprudence, is rooted in American anti-Catholicism and Nativism.[citation needed] Briefs before the Supreme Court, including by the U.S. government, have argued that some state constitutional amendments relating to the modern conception of separation of church and state (Blaine Amendments) were motivated by and intended to enact anti-Catholicism.[59]

text: J. Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee, responded to Hamburger's claims noting; "The fact that the separation of church and state has been supported by some who exhibited an anti-Catholic animus or a secularist bent does not impugn the validity of the principle. Champions of religious liberty have argued for the separation of church and state for reasons having nothing to do with anti-Catholicism or desire for a secular culture. Of course, separationists have opposed the Catholic Church when it has sought to tap into the public till to support its parochial schools or to argue for on-campus released time in the public schools. But that principled debate on the issues does not support a charge of religious bigotry"[60]

text: Steven Waldman notes that; "The evangelicals provided the political muscle for the efforts of Madison and Jefferson, not merely because they wanted to block official churches but because they wanted to keep the spiritual and secular worlds apart." "Religious freedom resulted from an alliance of unlikely partners," writes the historian Frank Lambert in his book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. "New Light evangelicals such as Isaac Bachus and John Leland joined forces with Deists and skeptics such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to fight for a complete separation of church and state."[61]

text: Politics and religion in the United States[edit]

text: Robert N. Bellah has in his writings that although the separation of church and state is grounded firmly in the constitution of the United States, this does not mean that there is no religious dimension in the political society of the United States. He used the term "Civil Religion" to describe the specific relation between politics and religion in the United States. His 1967 article analyzes the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy: "Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in using the word 'God' at all? The answer is that the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension."[62]

text: Robert S. Wood has argued that the United States is a model for the world in terms of how a separation of church and state—no state-run or state-established church—is good for both the church and the state, allowing a variety of religions to flourish.[63] Speaking at the Toronto-based Center for New Religions, Wood said that the freedom of conscience and assembly allowed under such a system has led to a "remarkable religiosity" in the United States that isn't present in other industrialized nations.[63] Wood believes that the U.S. operates on "a sort of civic religion," which includes a generally shared belief in a creator who "expects better of us." Beyond that, individuals are free to decide how they want to believe and fill in their own creeds and express their conscience. He calls this approach the "genius of religious sentiment in the United States."[63]

text: On July 26, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States worships God. [64]


document_title: The Breakfast Club

question_text: what is the criminal's name in the breakfast club

question_tokens: what is the criminal 's name in the breakfast club

root

text: The Breakfast Club

text: Plot[edit]

text: On Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students report at 7:00 a.m. for all-day detention at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois. While not complete strangers, each of them comes from a different clique, and they seem to have nothing in common: the beautiful and pampered Claire Standish, the state champion wrestler Andrew Clark, the geekish intellectual Brian Johnson, the introverted outcast Allison Reynolds, and the rebellious delinquent John Bender.

tag: p

text: They gather in the high school library, where assistant principal Richard Vernon instructs them not to speak, move from their seats, or sleep until they are released at 3:00 p.m. He assigns them a thousand-word essay, in which each must describe "who you think you are." He then leaves, returning only occasionally to check on them. John, who has a particularly antagonistic relationship with Vernon, ignores the rules and frequently riles up the other students, teasing Brian and Andrew and harassing Claire. Allison is initially quiet, except for an occasional random outburst. Over the course of the day, Vernon gives John several weekends' worth of additional detention and even locks him in a storage closet, but he escapes and returns to the library.

text: The students pass the hours by talking, arguing, and, at one point, smoking marijuana that John retrieves from his locker. Gradually, they open up to each other and reveal their deepest personal secrets: Allison is a compulsive liar; Andrew cannot easily think for himself; John comes from an abusive household; Brian was planning suicide with a flare gun due to the inability to cope with a bad grade; and Claire is a virgin who feels constant pressure from her friends to be a certain way. They also discover that they all have strained relationships with their parents, which are a key cause for their personal issues as well: Allison's parents ignore her due to their own problems; Andrew's father constantly criticizes his efforts at wrestling and pushes him as hard as possible; John's father verbally and physically abuses him; Brian's overbearing parents put immense pressure on him to earn high grades; and Claire's parents use her to get back at each other during frequent arguments. The students realize that, even with their differences, they face similar pressures and complications in their lives.

text: Despite their differences in social status, the group begins to form friendships as the day progresses. Claire gives Allison a makeover, to reveal just how pretty she really is, which sparks romantic interest in Andrew. Claire decides to break her "pristine" virgin appearance by kissing John in the closet and giving him a hickey. Although they suspect that the relationships will end with the end of their detention, their mutual experiences will change the way they look at their peers afterwards.

text: As the detention nears its end, the group requests that Brian complete the essay for everyone and John returns to the storage closet to fool Vernon into thinking he has not left. Brian writes the essay and leaves it in the library for Vernon to read after they leave. As the students part ways outside the school, Allison and Andrew kiss, as do Claire and John. Allison rips Andrew's state champion patch from his letterman jacket to keep, and Claire gives John one of her diamond earrings, which he attaches to his earlobe. Vernon reads the essay (read by Brian in voice-over), in which Brian states that Vernon has already judged who they are, using simple definitions and stereotypes. One by one, the five students' voices add, "But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." Brian signs the letter as "The Breakfast Club." John raises his fist in triumph as he walks across the school football field toward home.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Judd Nelson as John Bender
Molly Ringwald as Claire Standish
Emilio Estevez as Andy Clark
Anthony Michael Hall as Brian Johnson
Ally Sheedy as Allison Reynolds
Paul Gleason as Assistant Principal Vernon
John Kapelos as Carl Reed
Ron Dean as Mr. Clark

tag: ul

text: Production[edit]

text: Casting[edit]

text: Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall both starred in Hughes' 1984 film Sixteen Candles. Towards the end of filming, Hughes asked them both to be in The Breakfast Club. Hall became the first to be cast, agreeing to the role of Brian Johnson. Ringwald was originally approached to play the character of Allison Reynolds, but she was "really upset" because she wanted to play Claire Standish. She eventually convinced the director and the studio to give her the part.[7] The role of Allison ultimately went to Ally Sheedy.

text: Emilio Estevez originally auditioned for the role of John Bender. However, when Hughes was unable to find someone to play Andrew Clarke, Estevez was recast. Nicolas Cage was considered for the role of John Bender, which was the last role to be cast, though the role was narrowed down to John Cusack and Judd Nelson. Hughes eventually cast Cusack, but decided to replace him with Nelson before shooting began, because Cusack did not look threatening enough for the role. At one point, Hughes was disappointed at Nelson because he stayed in character by harassing Ringwald off-camera, and the other actors had to convince Hughes not to fire him.[7][8]

text: Rick Moranis was originally cast as the janitor but left due to creative differences and was replaced by John Kapelos.[9]

text: Filming[edit]

text: In 1999, Hughes said that his request to direct the film met with resistance and skepticism because he lacked filmmaking experience.[10] Hughes ultimately convinced the film's investors that due to the modest $1 million budget and its single location shoot, he could greatly minimize their risk. Hughes originally thought that The Breakfast Club would be his directorial debut. Hughes opted for an insular, largely one room set and wrote it about high school students, who would be played by younger actors.[11]

text: Principal photography began on March 28, 1984, and ended in May. Filming took place at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, Illinois, shuttered in 1981. The same setting was used for interior scenes of Hughes' 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which featured exterior shots from nearby Glenbrook North High School. The library at Maine North High School, considered too small for the film, prompted the crew to build the set in the school's gymnasium.[12] The actors rehearsed with each other for three weeks and then shot the film in sequence.[13] On the Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD commentary (featured on the 2004 DVD version), Hughes revealed that he shot the two films concurrently to save time and money, and some outtakes of both films feature elements of the film crews working on the other film. The first print was 150 minutes in length.[14]

text: During a cast reunion in honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Ally Sheedy revealed that a Director's Cut existed but Hughes' widow did not disclose any details concerning its whereabouts.[8]

text: In 2015 the first draft of the film's script was discovered in a Maine South High School cabinet as district employees were moving offices to a new building.[15]

text: Poster[edit]

text: The film's poster, featuring the five characters huddled together, was photographed by Annie Leibovitz toward the end of shooting. The shot of five actors gazing at the camera influenced the way teen films were marketed from that point on.[16] The poster refers to the five "types" of the story using slightly different terms than those used in the film, and in a different sequence, stating "They were five total strangers with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse."

text: Themes[edit]

text: The main theme of the film is the constant struggle of the American teenager to be understood, by adults and by themselves. It explores the pressure put on teenagers to fit into their own realms of high school social constructs, as well as the lofty expectations of their parents, teachers, and other authority figures. On the surface, the students have little in common with each other. However, as the day rolls on, they eventually bond over a common disdain for the aforementioned issues of peer pressure and parental expectations.[17][18] Stereotyping is another theme. Once the obvious stereotypes are broken down, the characters "empathize with each other's struggles, dismiss some of the inaccuracies of their first impressions, and discover that they are more similar than different."[19]

text: The main adult character, Mr. Vernon, is not portrayed in a positive light. He consistently talks down to the students and flaunts his authority throughout the film. Bender is the only one who stands up to Vernon.[17]

text: Release[edit]

text: The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 7, 1985. Universal Pictures released the film in cinemas on February 15, 1985 in the United States.

text: Home media[edit]

text: In 2003, the film was released on DVD as part of the "High School Reunion Collection."[20] In 2008, a "Flashback Edition" DVD was released with several special features, including an audio commentary with Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson.[21] A 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray was released in 2010,[22] and the same disc was re-released with a DVD and digital copy in 2012 as part of Universal's 100th Anniversary series.[23][24] On March 10, 2015, the 30th Anniversary Edition was released. This release was digitally remastered and restored from the original 35mm film negatives for better picture quality on DVD, Digital HD and Blu-ray.[25]

text: On October 16, 2017, The Criterion Collection announced that the film will be released in a special edition in January 2018.[26]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: The film received high critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% approval rating based on 58 reviews with a critical consensus that states "The Breakfast Club is a warm, insightful, and very funny look into the inner lives of teenagers."[27] Kathleen Carroll from the New York Daily News stated, "Hughes has a wonderful knack for communicating the feelings of teenagers, as well as an obvious rapport with his exceptional cast - who deserves top grades."[28] Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 62% based on 11 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable reviews."[29]

text: Box office[edit]

text: In February 1985, the film debuted at #3 at the box office (behind blockbuster film Beverly Hills Cop and Witness starring Harrison Ford).[30] Grossing $45,875,171 domestically and $51,525,171 worldwide, the film is a box office success, given its alleged $1 million budget.[31]

text: Accolades[edit]

text: Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Paul Gleason and Ally Sheedy won a Silver Bucket of Excellence Award at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards in 2005.

text:
Award
Nominee
Result

Silver Bucket of Excellence Award
Anthony Michael Hall
Judd Nelson
Paul Gleason
Molly Ringwald
Ally Sheedy
Won

tag: table

text: Legacy[edit]

text: The Breakfast Club is known as the "quintessential 1980s film" and is considered as one of the best films of the decade.[32] In 2008, Empire magazine ranked it #369 on their The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time list.[33] It then rose 331 places to rank at #38 on their 2014 list.[34] Similarly, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list[35] and Entertainment Weekly ranked the film number 1 on its list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[36] In the 2001 parody film Not Another Teen Movie, Gleason reprised his role as Assistant Principal Vernon in a short scene that parodies The Breakfast Club.[37]

text: In 2005, the film received the Silver Bucket of Excellence Award in honor of its 20th anniversary at the MTV Movie Awards. For the event, MTV attempted to reunite the original cast. Sheedy, Ringwald, and Hall appeared together on stage, with Kapelos in the audience; Gleason gave the award to his former castmates. Estevez could not attend because of other commitments, and Nelson appeared earlier in the show but left before the on-stage reunion, prompting Hall to joke that the two were "in Africa with Dave Chappelle." Yellowcard performed Simple Minds' anthem for the film, "Don't You (Forget About Me)," at the awards. At the 82nd Academy Awards (March 7, 2010), Sheedy, Hall, Ringwald, and Nelson all appeared in a tribute to John Hughes — who had died a few months prior — along with other actors who had worked with him, including Jon Cryer from Pretty in Pink, Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone.

text: Soundtrack[edit]

text:
The Breakfast Club (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Soundtrack album by various artists

Released
February 19, 1985

Recorded
1984

Genre
Rock, new wave

Length
38:02

Label
A&M Records

Producer
various artists

Singles from The Breakfast Club (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

"Don't You"
Released: February 20, 1985 (US), April 8, 1985 (UK)

Audio sample

Simple Minds—Don't You (Forget About Me)

file
help

text: The Breakfast Club soundtrack album was released on February 19, 1985 by A&M Records. The album peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" performed by Scottish rock band Simple Minds was released on February 20, 1985 in the United States and on April 8, 1985 in the United Kingdom as a single and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

text: Track listing[edit]

text:
"Don't You (Forget About Me)" – Simple Minds
"Waiting" – E.G. Daily
"Fire in the Twilight" – Wang Chung
"I'm the Dude" (instrumental) – Keith Forsey
"Heart Too Hot to Hold" – Jesse Johnson and Stephanie Spruill
"Dream Montage" (instrumental) – Gary Chang
"We Are Not Alone" – Karla DeVito
"Reggae" (instrumental) – Keith Forsey
"Didn't I Tell You?" – Joyce Kennedy
"Love Theme" (instrumental) – Keith Forsey

tag: ol

text: Critical reception[edit]

text: In a June 25, 1985 review for The Village Voice, music critic Robert Christgau gave the album a "D−" and said that it has "utterly negligible" songs, and he commended Simple Minds for trying to distance themselves from their song, "Don't You (Forget About Me)," best known for being played during the film's opening and closing credits.[38] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the soundtrack three out of five stars and wrote that, apart from Simple Minds' "undisputed masterpiece," the album is largely "disposable" and marred by "'80s artifacts" and "forgettable instrumentals."[39]


document_title: Delilah

question_text: where is the story of samson and delilah found

text: Delilah

text: In the Bible[edit]

text: Delilah was a woman of Sorek.[1] She is the only woman in Samson's story who is named.[4] The Bible says that Samson loved her (Judges 16:4) but not that she loved him.[4] The two were not married[4] and the idea that they had a sexual relationship is, in the words of Josey Bridges Snyder, "at most implicit in the biblical text".[5] The lords of the Philistines bribed her to discover the source of Samson's great strength, each offering to give her 1,100 silver coins.[1][6] Three times she failed.[1]

text: First, at his own suggestion, she bound him with "seven green withes," but these he easily snapped asunder.[1] Then she tied him with new ropes: these also failed.[1] Then, she fastened the locks of his hair to the loom but with the same result.[1] Finally, after many complaints that Samson did not trust her, he told her that his strength lay in his hair.[1] Then, when he was asleep, she ordered a servant to cut Samson's hair.[4] She then awoke him, and delivered him into the hands of the waiting Philistine chiefs.[1]

text: The Bible does not mention her fate,[7] and, as James D. G. Dunn and John William Rogerson note in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, it never discusses whether or not Delilah felt guilt for her actions.[8]

text: Religious views[edit]

text: Jewish interpretations[edit]

text: Josephus and Pseudo-Philo both view Delilah as a Philistine and a prostitute; Josey Bridges Snyder theorizes that this may be due to the fact that Book of Judges portrays Samson as being attracted to both Philistine women (Judges 14:1) and prostitutes (Judges 16:1).[5] Pseudo-Philo also writes that Delilah was Samson's wife.[5] The Talmud says that Delilah used sex to get Samson to reveal his secret, in spite of the fact that the biblical text does not state that the two had a sexual relationship,[5] while midrash state that Delilah harassed Samson verbally and physically during sex to get him to tell her the source of his strength.[9] Midrashim on Delilah reveal negative attitudes toward non-Jewish women[9] and are supposed to "demonstrate the havoc that a foreign woman could wreak".[9] The midrash says that Samson lost his strength because of his relationship with Delilah, a foreign woman, and not because his hair was cut,[9] and that the angel who foretold Samson's birth to his mother knew that Delilah would cause him to break his Nazirite vow.[9]

text: Late aggadah say that Samson and Delilah had sons together who were strong like their father; Eldad ha-Dani claims that their sons resided in the land of Havilah and each had voices as "triumphal...as a lion’s roar".[9] Medieval midrash propose that Delilah was the mother of Micah from the biblical narrative of Micah's Idol.[10] This theory rests on the fact that, in Judges 17, Micah's mother gives her son 1,100 silver coins to construct his idol, similar to how Delilah was promised 1,100 silver coins to betray her lover by the Philistine leaders.[10] This tradition explains the conflation of Delilah and Micah's mother by noting that Bible introduces the narrative of Micah's Idol immediately after the narrative of Samson and Delilah.[10] Rashi disputes this theory, as the Seder Olam Rabbah states that Micah and Samson were not contemporaries and that Micah lived during the time of Othniel.[10]

text: Christian interpretations[edit]

text: Most Christian commentary on Delilah condemns her. Saint Ambrose represents Delilah as a Philistine prostitute[5] and declares that "men should avoid marriage with those outside the faith, lest, instead of love of one's spouse, there be treachery."[5] Marbodius of Rennes uses the examples of Delilah, Eve, Lot's daughters, Herodias, Clytemnestra, and Procne to illustrate that women are a "pleasant evil, at once a honeycomb and a poison".[11] Christian commentators have viewed Samson as a type of Jesus Christ, based on similarities between Samson's story and the life of Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament[12][13] Samson's betrayal by Delilah has also been compared to Jesus' betrayal by Judas Iscariot;[13] both Delilah and Judas were paid in pieces of silver for their respective deeds.[14] However, Thomas de Vio Cajetan views Delilah in a somewhat sympathetic light, suggesting that she never intended Samson to be killed or wounded. He asserts that Delilah accepted a bribe from the Philistine leaders because they convinced her that Samson would merely be weakened.[5]

text: Caesarius of Arles views Delilah's temptation of Samson as similar to Satan's temptation of Christ.[5] Isidore of Seville does see Samson as prefiguring Christ, but argues that "in yielding to Delilah, Samson did not prefigure Christ. Instead he exemplified the fall of the sinful man".[15] Similarly, Billy Graham sees Samson's eyes being gouged out after he was handed over to the Philistines as his punishment for succumbing to his lust for Delilah; Graham also sees this as an example of the concept that one reaps what one sows.[16] Joyce Meyer writes that Satan worked through Delilah, as he was aware that Samson had "a weakness for women". Meyer sees Delilah's relationship with Samson as an example of how the devil exploits people's weaknesses.[17]

text: Scholarly views[edit]

text: Delilah is usually thought to have been a Philistine,[4] although she is not identified as such in the Bible.[4] The name "Delilah" is a Hebrew name,[18] however, numerous foreigners in the Bible have Hebrew names, so Delilah's name cannot be seen as indisputable proof that she was Hebrew.[19] J. Cheryl Exum of the Jewish Women's Archive argues that the author of the Book of Judges would probably not portray Delilah in a negative light if she were a fellow Israelite.[4] Samson was attracted to Philistine women; he had previously been married to one.[4] Exum writes that the arguments that Delilah was a Philistine are inconclusive,[4] while the Jewish Encyclopedia says that Delilah was a Philistine in all probability.[1]

text: Dolores G. Kamrada write in Heroines, Heroes and Deity: Three Narratives of the Biblical Heroic Tradition that Delilah is similar to Jael, a woman mentioned in the fourth and fifth chapters of the Book of Judges who murders Sisera by driving a tent peg into his head,[20] and frequently compared to the title character of the Book of Judith, who beheads Holofernes;[20] all three women defeat powerful warriors.[20] According to Susan Ackerman, Delilah differs from Jael and Judith in that she "sells out to the enemy, rather than the other way around".[21]

text: Some scholarly commentary on Delilah centers on her gender. In the Feminist Companion to Judges, Carol Smith says that feminist commentators tend to stress Delilah's positive qualities, explain her negative ones, or ignore her in favor of "other biblical women who are more amenable to reinterpretation in a positive way".[18] James D. G. Dunn and John William Rogerson feel that the Bible portrays Delilah as "a doubly dangerous woman given her apparent independence", noting that she is not "identified by a male relationship - the wife, daughter or sister of anyone" but simply "appears in her own right".[8] Conversely, Phillip Lopate writes "while the message of Samson's fall, like Adam's, would seem to be cautionary and misogynistic, underneath we see his time with Delilah as a liberating fantasy....Don't we secretly rejoice at his having the good sense to follow the route of his desire, to free himself from the 'good boy' Nazirite onus by putting himself in temptation's way?"[22]

text:
Haaretz's Elon Gilad writes "some biblical stories are flat-out cautions against marrying foreign women, none more than the story of Samson",[23] noting that Samson's relationship with Delilah leads to his demise.[23] He contrasts this to what he sees as a more positive portrayal of intermarriage in the Book of Ruth.[23] James D. G. Dunn and John William Rogerson say in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible that Delilah exemplifies an important theme in the Book of Judges - a fear of assimilation.[8] They see the narratives of Samson, Gideon, and Jephthah as cautionary tales against men choosing partners who could create "impure offspring".[8] Melissa A. Jackson, in Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: A Subversive Collaboration, says that the Bible delineates between "good" foreigners like Tamar, Pharaoh's daughter, Rahab, and Ruth, and "bad" foreigners like Jezebel and Delilah.[24]
Contrariwise, Elizabeth Wurtzel sees Samson's relationship with Delilah as "the archetypal story of cross-cultural love between members of warring nations", akin to Romeo and Juliet.[18]

text: Cultural influence[edit]

text: According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Delilah's name has "become synonymous with a voluptuous, treacherous woman".[25] The use of the name "Delilah" to connote deceit or betrayal can be found in works such as the Tom Jones song "Delilah" (1968), Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (1986), and Pat Conroy's Beach Music (1995).[26] In One Thousand and One Nights, her name is applied to cunning women.[1]

text: Delilah also appears as a character in a number of works of art. John Milton's closet drama Samson Agonistes, an allegory for the downfall of the Puritans and the restoration of the English monarchy,[27] casts Delilah as an unrepentant, but sympathetic, deceiver[28] and speaks approvingly of the subjugation of women.[28]

text: In 1735, George Frideric Handel wrote the opera Samson,[29] with a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, based on Samson Agonistes.[29] The opera is almost entirely set inside Samson's prison[29] and Delilah appears only briefly in Act II.[29] In 1877, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the opera Samson and Delilah with a libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire in which the entire story of Samson and Delilah is retold.[29] In the libretto, Delilah is portrayed as a seductive femme fatale,[29] but the music played during her parts invokes sympathy for her.[29]

text: The 1949 Biblical drama Samson and Delilah, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the titular roles, was widely praised by critics for its cinematography, lead performances, costumes, sets, and innovative special effects.[30] It became the highest-grossing film of 1950[31] and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two.[32] According to Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, the film depicts Delilah as "a much more noble creature than legend would lead us to suppose".[33] In Samson and Delilah, Delilah is the sister of Samson's wife, and repents cutting off his hair. When Samson prepares to collapse the pillars, Delilah does not follow Samson's advice to get out and she dies alongside him when the temple collapses.[33] Actresses who have portrayed Delilah besides Lamarr include Belinda Bauer in Samson and Delilah (1984),[34] Elizabeth Hurley in Samson and Delilah (1996),[35] and Caitlin Leahy in Samson (2018).[36]

text: The tale of Samson and Delilah is retold in Regina Spektor's love song "Samson" from her album Songs (2000).[37]

text: Notes[edit]

text:
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore;  et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Delilah". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.

Jump up ^ "Samson". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 31, 2017.

Jump up ^ "Samson". Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 5, 2018.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i "Delilah". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2017.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Newsome, Carol Ann; Ringe, Sharon H.; Lapsley, Jacqueline E., eds. (2012) [1992]. Women's Bible Commentary (third ed.). Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-664-23707-3.

Jump up ^ Judges 16

Jump up ^ Rogerson, John W. (1999). Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Ancient Israel. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 62. ISBN 0-500-05095-3.

^ Jump up to: a b c d Dunn, James D. G.; Rogerson, John William, eds. (2003). Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 200–201. ISBN 9780802837110.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Bechtel, Lyn M. "Delilah:Midrash and Aggadah". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2017.

^ Jump up to: a b c d Kadari, Tamar. "Mother of Micah: Midrash and Aggadah". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved November 5, 2017.

Jump up ^ Hecker, Eugene (2005). "A Short History of Women's Rights". pp. 58–59. Retrieved November 4, 2017.

Jump up ^ Thomson, Edward (1838). "Prophecy, Types, And Miracles, The Great Bulwarks Of Christianity: Or A Critical Examination And Demonstration Of Some Of The Evidences By Which The Christian Faith Is Supported". Hatchard & Son. pp. 299–300. Retrieved October 30, 2017.

^ Jump up to: a b Heaster, Duncan (2017). "Micah: Old Testament New European Christadelphian Commentary". Retrieved October 30, 2017.

Jump up ^ Lynn G, S (2008). "A Study of the Good the Bad and the Desperate Women in the Bible". p. 46. Retrieved October 30, 2017.

Jump up ^ Perlove, Shelley; Silver, Larry (2008). "Rembrandt's Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age". p. 108. Retrieved November 5, 2017.

Jump up ^ Graham, Billy (September 2007). "We Reap What We Sow". Decision Magazine. Retrieved November 5, 2017.

Jump up ^ "The Everyday Life Bible: The Power of God's Word for Everyday Living". 2006. Retrieved November 5, 2017.

^ Jump up to: a b c Brenner-Idan, Athalya, ed. (1999). Feminist Companion to Judges. Sheffield Academic Press. p. 95. ISBN 9780567053572.

Jump up ^ Exum, J. Cheryl (1996). Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, Ltd. p. 184. ISBN 1-85075-592-2.

^ Jump up to: a b c Kamrada, Dolores G., ed. (2016). Heroines, Heroes and Deity: Three Narratives of the Biblical Heroic Tradition. Bloomsbury. pp. 84–85. ISBN 9780567662385.

Jump up ^ Vander Stichele, Caroline; Pyper, Hugh S., eds. (2012). Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What Is in the Picture?. Society of Biblical Literature. p. 302. ISBN 9781589836624.

Jump up ^ Lopate, Phillip (2003). Getting Personal: Selected Writings. Basic Books. p. 37. ISBN 9780465041732.

^ Jump up to: a b c Gilad, Elon (June 4, 2014). "Intermarriage and the Jews: What Would the Early Israelites Say?". Haaretz. Retrieved October 30, 2017.

Jump up ^ Jackson, Melissa A. (2012). Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: A Subversive Collaboration. Oxford University Press. p. 222. ISBN 9780199656776.

Jump up ^ "Delilah". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved October 31, 2017.

Jump up ^ Exum, J. Cheryl (1996). Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, Ltd. pp. 175–176. ISBN 1-85075-592-2.

Jump up ^ Smith, Preserved (1930). A History of Modern Culture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 387. ISBN 978-1-108-07464-3.

^ Jump up to: a b Guillory, John (1986). "Dalila's House: Samson Agonistes' and the Sexual Division of Labor".  In Ferguson, Margaret; Quilligan, Maurren; Vickers, Nancy. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226243146.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Leneman, Helen (2000). "Portrayals of Power in the Stories of Delilah and Bathsheba: Seduction in Song".  In Aichele, George. Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, Ltd. p. 153. ISBN 1-84127-075-X.

Jump up ^ McKay, James (2013). The Films of Victor Mature. McFarland & Company. p. 76. ISBN 9780786449705.

Jump up ^ Barton, Ruth (2010). Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. p. 174. ISBN 9780813126104.

Jump up ^ "23rd Academy Awards Winners". www.oscars.org.

^ Jump up to: a b Crowther, Bosley (December 22, 1949). "THE SCREEN: LAVISH DE MILLE FILM ARRIVES; ' Samson and Delilah' Has Its Premiere at Two Theatres, Rivoli and Paramount". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2017.

Jump up ^ "Samson and Delilah 1984". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 8, 2018.

Jump up ^ "Samson and Delilah 1996". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 8, 2018.

Jump up ^ "Samson Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved February 18, 2018.

Jump up ^ Porter, Brittany (November 29, 2014). "The 10 best Regina Spektor songs". AXS TV. Retrieved April 8, 2018.