Dear Editor,

Your opposition editorial regarding Gov. Bevin’s call for another “Year of the Bible” warrants a reply.

Within your comments you acknowledge Kentucky’s overwhelming Christian majority, unleashed en masse Election Day. That bellwether event bears witness to a craving for change, answered then and now by Gov. Bevin. Without that 2016 call for revival and return to Christian values, perhaps commonwealth voters might have tread a lesser path, or not voted at all.

“Separation of church and atate” is NOT a Constitutional edict; it stands ONLY as an 1801 letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Connecticut’s Danbury Baptist Church — now all too often taken far beyond its intended meaning. In fact, modern originalist Constitutional scholars evaluate Jefferson’s letter as being a “misused metaphor;” with separation of church and state a “secular (non-religious) myth”.

Are we to believe Constitutional “separation of church and state” exists when Christian examples abound; seen, heard and pledged across Kentucky’s courts and America’s Capital?  

• On Sept. 6, 1774, the First Continental Congress prayed, “through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Savior;”

• Moses holds the Ten Commandments in stone relief at the Supreme Court entrance;

• inside, a Biblical scene watches over the words of that esteemed high court;

• official swearing-in ceremonies are held with hands on the Bible;

• actual Bible verses are etched in stone on Washington buildings and monuments.

Two books were required in our first federally chartered classrooms: Webster’s Dictionary and the Holy Bible. Students learned from James Madison, father of our Constitution, “We have staked the whole of America’s political institutions … sustaining ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” And from Patrick Henry, “It cannot be stated too strongly that this great nation was founded … on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

For two decades, it was my honor to hear Danville’s own Bunny Davis offer the opening prayer in Kentucky’s House of Representatives. Would someone dare try to take away that time-honored tradition? In Frankfort? In Washington?

We should all offer our gratitude for Gov. Bevin’s second initiative to declare Kentucky a state glorifying God’s Holy Word.

Tom Ellis

Danville