I received this from my wife from a co-worker from yada-yada-yada but checked it out on Snopes.com, like I expect ALL of you to ALWAYS do before circulating stories that tug at your heart.
They walked in tandem, each of the ninety-two students filing into the already crowded auditorium. With their rich maroon gowns flowing and the traditional caps, they looked almost as grown up as they felt.
Dads swallowed hard behind broad smiles, and Moms freely brushed away
tears…This class would NOT pray during the commencements, not by choice, but because of a recent court ruling prohibiting it. The principal and several students were careful to stay within the guidelines allowed by the ruling. They gave inspirational and challenging speeches, but no one mentioned divine guidance and no one asked for blessings on the graduates or their families.
The speeches were nice, but they were routine until the final speech received a standing ovation.
A solitary student walked proudly to the microphone. He stood still and silent for just a moment, and then, it happened.
The speaker suddenly SNEEZED!!!!
All of the students, in unison, said,
“GOD BLESS YOU!”
And he walked off the stage…
The audience exploded into applause. This graduating class had found a unique way to invoke God’s blessing on their future with or without the court’s approval.
This is the real account, according to Snopes.com, of a doctored version that has been circulating for years: The Sneeze
This just brings into light, once again, that there is no Constitutional basis for the wall of separation of church and state. The phrase has been the battle cry of political correctness for years, and the public needs to educate themselves instead of regurgitating what the media says. It was something Thomas Jefferson said in response to persecuted Baptists at the time. In a carefully crafted response to the Baptists who were celebrating his zealous advocacy for religious liberty, Jefferson endorsed the persecuted Baptists’ aspirations for religious liberty in what is now known as the Danbury Letter:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. (source: Letter from Jefferson to Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut, 1 January 1802, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress), Series 1, Box 89, December 2, 1801-January 1, 1802.)
You can read the whole account here at The Heritage Foundation. Please burn this information into your brain for the next time you hear the words “separation of church and state.” May your head explode as often as mine does, hearing that phrase mis-used. The more I read of their material, the more I want to donate to their cause and get access to even more material.
