The writer of the letter “Revisionist history” (April 13, TribLive) asks to be shown “anywhere in the United States Constitution and its amendments where ‘embedded’ is the phrase ‘separation of church and state.’ ”

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, wrote in his Detached Memoranda: “Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Government in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.” Madison cites “the erroneous idea of a national religion.”

John Adams in his Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law claimed that people came to America to escape Europe’s bloody combinations of state and church (the feudal and canon laws).

Consequently, Founders embedded into the Constitution Article VI prohibiting any religious test for office or public trust under the United States. They embedded the First Amendment prohibiting an establishment of religion, granting free exercise of religion (to all religions).

Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”

In his July 10, 1822, letter to Edward Livingston, Madison writes: “Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance … in showing that religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

Bruce Braden

Carmel, Ind.

The writer is a Mt. Pleasant native.

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