The division of biased religious perspective from a government catering to all beliefs. This is contradicted in Bush's ban on abortion for everyone of every religion in the United States that derives from his christian beliefs.

The seperation of church and state is implied in the 1st amendment with "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof." This means that the state cannot force children to go to a public school or have a state based church. This is to protect everyone's religious views to the extent it does not harm another.

"separation of Church and State" as implied by the Constitution was originally intended to keep the government from dictating and controlling religion. Also, to keep the church from providing political puppets to rule in it's favor. It was never intended to be weilded as a device to eradicate all religous content from every government-sponsored activity.

The idea that government shall favor no religion for another or make no law that is bias toward one religion and not another.

What it does not say is that elected officials can not be religious. It says they should make no law that favors religion or display favoritism in a public government institution.

Putting a cross in the back of your office is fine, displaying a statue of the ten commandments in front of a court house is not.

Separation of Church and State is an ideology protecting religious freedom by ensuring government does not interfere to favor or disfavor private religious establishments so long as they practice without violating another's individual rights. The clause also protects from churches and other religious organizations interfering with government practices in an attempt to remove religious freedom so as to favor their beliefs. This clause proposes a metaphorical wall between government and religious establishments, unlike the one-way street idea proposed by fanatical religious theocrats.

In America, the purpose of separation of church and state is to avoid 'excessive entanglement' of the two institutions. An important court ruling on the subject led to the Lemon Test, which holds three conditions on a government's actions: that it must have a legitimate secular purpose, must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of the government and religion.

An important part of the Constitution that isn't literally written in said document. It's implied, under the reasoning that since we have freedom of religion, any leaning on the government's part toward any one religion would force everyone to only be a part of that religion, and violate their constitutional rights.

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