WILMINGTON, Del. — Christine O’Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from a law-school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.
“Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked while Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.
Coons responded that O’Donnell’s question “reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is. . . . The First Amendment establishes a separation.”
The candidate vying for the Senate seat held for years by Vice President Joe Biden retorted: “So you’re telling me . . . the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ is in the First Amendment?”
Her campaign issued a statement later saying she “was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution.”
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh made the same point in his radio program after the debate.
The subject of religion and the law came up during the candidates’ debate at Widener University Law School as O’Donnell criticized Coons for saying teaching creationism in public school would violate the Constitution.
Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that under the “indispensable principle” of separation of church and state “religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools.”
The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The phrase “separation of church and state” is usually traced to President Thomas Jefferson.
