Separation

of Church and State

Monnier

Process Paper
This year for National History Day I felt the need to do a project a little more

close to home, something I wanted to prove that was commonly overlooked, yet affects my day life. As I became more knowledgeable on the issue of separation of church and state, I began to question its meaning, and the more a learned the more uneasy I felt about the term separation of church and state. I have come to three conclusions: that the Christian heritage of America is not being taught, that the true feelings of our founding fathers are being obscured and that the true boundaries of church and state are not being told to citizens. About this time, the new school year rolled around and I had my topic. With all the bias and tertiary information out there, I attempted to stick to

primary sources except to gain historical context and background. I started out by studying the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Then, I began looking to the root behind the term separation of church and state by looking at the Danbury Baptist letter. From there, I began a to look into the history of America. I looked into newspapers and letters as well as studied acclaimed books about American Heritage. After that, I interviewed an expert named David Barton, (a historical and constitutional expert ), and learned more about the Founding Fathers. Towards the end of my research, I studied more writings of the Founding Fathers to understand their feelings about religion. At this point, I began constructing my project. In the past, I have always done

better at building websites and, due to the lack of videos for this project, a website was the most suitable project for me. First thing I did was develop my template,

Separation of Church and State

Monnier

because none of the Weebly templates fit my project. After I cleaned up my template so it would work on Weebly, I constructed the layout based on the function of the site and on the outline of my presentation. Then I treated it much like a paper and added pictures and media for sensory aid. When finishing up my project, I added a navigation aid, a project flow button, and links to Java and Flash like N.H.D. guidelines suggest/require. My topic focuses on our countrys early revolution period. The websites

main goals are to provide a better understanding on religions affects on this period, to expose how our Founding Fathers felt about religion and the freedoms that go with it, and enlighten people to the fact that the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence are to promote all the freedoms that our American Revolution was founded on. Our country is a revolution in itself, so why cover that up by obscuring some of the most basic rights of every living being?