On Wednesday, October 29, 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance spoke at the University of Mississippi during the first Turning Point USA campus event since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. About 10,000 people attended the gathering. During the question-and-answer session, Vance talked about what he called a misunderstanding of the phrase “separation of church and state.” He said that those exact words do not appear in the U.S. Constitution. According to JD Vance, the Constitution only prevents Congress from creating a national religion, but it does not stop individual states or local communities from supporting religion or having an official church if they choose to do so.
Here is a portion of Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the Turning Point USA event held at the University of Mississippi:
• “I want to make sure that we are all on the same page. If you go back to the First Amendment, it doesn’t say “separation of church and state,” it says, ‘Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion.’ But if you go back to the founding time, there were actually a number of states that had formally recognized churches. There was the Anglican Church of Virginia. That was the official state church of Virginia. Maryland at the time was the only majority Catholic colony, or at least had a significant Catholic representation of the original 13 colonies. There’s a lot there.” (Video)
• “What I believe happened is the Supreme Court interpreted, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,’ to effectively throw the church out of every public space at the federal, state, and local level. I think it was a terrible mistake, and we are still paying for the consequences of it today.” (Video)
• “But if you were to undo that, and if we were to get back to a system actually meant by the founders where Congress is not setting up an established religion, but people in their local communities can kind of do whatever it is that they want to do, I think that would be a better system than what we have today. But I think the most important principle that we have got to remember is you do not have to completely kick God out of the public square, which is what we’ve done in modern America. It’s not what the founders wanted, it’s not good for the United States of America, and anybody who tells you it’s required by the Constitution is lying to you. Thank you.” (Video)
While it is true that when the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment—“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”—adopted in 1791, was originally applied only to the federal government and not to the states; however, Vice President Vance left out a major important fact: After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868. This amendment made sure that all citizens, including former slaves, had the same rights and protections in every state throughout the country. It also meant that the freedoms in the Bill of Rights, such as the rule against establishing a state religion, now applied to state and local governments as well as the federal government.
Notice how the Fourteenth Amendment places limits on what states can do when it comes to matters of religious liberty:
• “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (14th Amendment, Section 1).
Since then, all levels of government—federal, state, and local—have been bound by the Establishment Clause. This principle was confirmed in the Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education (1947), which ruled that the Establishment Clause applies to state and local laws through the Fourteenth Amendment. [1] This means that neither the federal government nor any state or local government can establish an official church.
Any politician or group—including J.D. Vance and Turning Point USA—that claims states can create their own official religion, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, is not only mistaken about the Constitution but also pushing a dangerous idea. This belief threatens one of America’s most important freedoms: the separation of church and state. The Fourteenth Amendment makes it clear that no state can deny its citizens the same protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, including religious liberty. To argue otherwise is to roll back more than a century of constitutional precedent and open the door to religious coercion.
From a prophetic perspective, the idea that individual states could enforce religious observance is precisely the kind of union of church and state foretold in Revelation 13. The “image of the beast” represents the restoration of the same persecuting power that once sought to control conscience through the union of religion and civil government. When the state begins to enforce the doctrines or observances of the church—whether in the name of morality, tradition, or “Christian nationalism”—it steps onto a path that history has repeatedly shown to lead to oppression.
This same line of thinking was used in the past to justify Sunday laws across many states. As a result, many Adventists were arrested, fined, or even sent to prison and forced to work on chain gangs simply for refusing to work on Saturday and choosing to work on Sunday instead. Ellen G. White gave the following warning about the union of church and state:
“The beast mentioned in this message, whose worship is enforced by the two-horned beast, is the first, or leopard-like beast of Revelation 13,—the papacy. The image to the beast represents that form of apostate Protestantism which will be developed when the Protestant churches shall seek the aid of the civil power for the enforcement of their dogmas” (Great Controversy, p. 445).
The growing claim that states have the right to establish their own religion is not only constitutionally false—it is dangerous. Such ideas open the door to the same spirit that once persecuted dissenters and forced people to act against their conscience in the name of public morality. Whenever civil government takes it upon itself to define or enforce religion, it inevitably leads to discrimination, punishment, and the loss of freedom. From the Sunday law imprisonments of faithful Sabbath keepers in the 19th century to the persecution of minority faiths throughout history, the record shows that when church and state unite, it always leads to the revival of tyranny.
Sources
[1] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state/
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They interpret the Constitution as they please. I assume they will use this 13th amendment as a punishment for every criminals, just to get free workers. As EGW said slavery will return to USA, especially to the southern states.
“13th Amendment
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
The problem to day is People are dumbed down to what “iniquitous connection” means in the Great Controversy. As it is today, the Image of the Beast is fully matured, and every denomination in the US INC is incorporated under the STATE, obeying the requirements, and Mandates of the STATE. There is no such thing as separation of CHURCH and STATE today. They are all combined together commercially, and incorporated. See Blacks Law Dictionary, and Hale v. Henkel, 20 US 43. This unity of CHURCH and STATE fulfills Ezekiel 28: 5, 16; Revelation 17 and chapter 18.
This argument that is being used by many, to unite church and state is deceptive. Circular reasoning is being used. How?
• For the same points you made above about leaving out important history.
• The history of why many people fled Europe and came to the American is perhaps most important in this argument, which is also left out of this argument. Millions fled seeking a land of freedom from terrible religous persecution and Monarchies that ruled in the dark ages; they fled from a power of church and state united, where kings did the bidding of the church to destroy those who refuse to surrender conscience. But now they are seeking to do the same that caused the world’s worst persecutions and death to force the conscience, while they making it appear as if it’s for the benefit for U. S. citizens.
• Just because there is no exact phrase of “separation of church and state” is not a good argument. It is the principle that matters! And these principles similar to how God’s Law is designed, is to prevent the worst kind of slavery, persecution, and forcing people to trample upon God’s Holy Moral Law.
Look at what Jesus said in the Scriptures:
“27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. ” Matthew 5:27-28 KJV
We see that the one of the 10 Commandments – God’s Holy Moral Law says “thou shalt not commit adultery”. However, Jesus was teaching us that there are many ways we can commit adultery, or that we should shun or abstain from the things that lead to commiting adultery and breaking His Holy Moral Law.
So God’s Holy Moral Law are 10 Principles, where all type of sins can be applied to each one.
This is why the entire Scriptures are an extension of the 10 Commandments – God’s Holy Moral Law. This is why Christ Jesus came to fulfill the Law not abolish it; He came to teach and show all of us, setting the example of how to keep God’s Law. For example, the process of commiting sin begins in the mind, that if we dwell on temptations or evil thoughts log enough, we will eventually act them out or commit them.
So when we say and believe that church and state should be separate, this is the essence and Principle of the Constitution. This was the purpose, because of previous evils that make up the dark ages. It is to prevent such a thing to ever happen again. This argument is so serious that ignoring history is deadly.
“In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.”—Congressional documents (U.S.A.), serial No. 200, document No. 271.
As the tidings spread through the countries of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey the convictions of his own conscience, thousands flocked to the shores of the New World. Colonies rapidly multiplied. “ Ellen G. White ‘Great Controversy’ pages 295.1 – GC 296.1
The title of this article is kind of confusing.
“Any politician or group—including J.D. Vance and Turning Point USA—that claims states can create their own official religion, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, is not only mistaken about the Constitution but also pushing a dangerous idea. This belief threatens one of America’s most important freedoms: the separation of church and state”
Interesting how one of America’s most important freedoms did not exist between 1776 and 1868. For 92 years, the Mark of the Beast was not established despite the absence of this amendment.