After yesterday's news of the Delaware Senate debate controversy surrounding the separation of church and state and the First Amendment, experts and advocates have been chiming in to explain that the principle is in fact *in* the Constitution. Here's Charles Haynes:

The drafters of the Bill of Rights didn't use the words "separation of church and state" in the First Amendment. But by prohibiting the federal government from passing any law "respecting an establishment of religion" – what is now called the Establishment clause – the Framers clearly and unambiguously separated the institutions of government and religion on the federal level.

It is unfortunate, even dangerous, that the principle of separation has been demonized in the culture wars as something alien to the Constitution. Church-state separation is, after all, a founding principle of the United States.