(Thanks, H. :)

Reader Historianx writes:

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Ten Commandments and Common Law Re Anna Von Reitz Helpful Insights for C....

Most Americans today recognize separation of church and state as a good thing. I concur. Government power needs limits of all kinds. Religion is only one boundary to enforce. Too bad so many stop there.

However don't read modern sentiments into history. Several American states had official churches in the eighteenth century. The establishment clause only bounded federal action. It did not stop state churches.

The shopworn separation phrase dropped in a personal letter of Jefferson, an aspiring Illuminist in contact with Weishaupt's men, albeit more as useful idiot than witting accomplice. Doc Marquis confirmed Jefferson's ties. Our perspective on the founding era is warped by modern secular historians, paid and promoted by the usual suspects to showboat rare deists and atheists among the founders, who were nearly all fundamentalists in modern slang. The interplay of religion and government was more involved than our court historians want to admit.

Still, here's an article refuting the claim that American common law is based on the Ten Commandments.

Link https://commonlawamerica.wordpress.com/2022/06/28/my-conversation-with-brent-allan-winters-common-law-in-america/

I temper it with an observation. American culture was heavily Biblical. The Great Awakening was backdrop to Revolution. Also see the period arguments on the Bill of Rights showing certain things were thought so obvious they needed no codification. Founders expected American law would comport with the whole Bible, not just its Ten Commandments. They did not formalize such expectations. Everybody just knew.

Had they, or even Jefferson, foreseen the wild success of determined world revolutionaries like Weishaupt in destroying religious belief, they might have been more direct with law. It was difficult enough getting the "obvious" Bill of Rights passed. One can for all that still find numerous American court judgments quoting the Bible and encouraging personal repentance.

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