On Jan. 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists in which he first used the expression "separation between Church and State." Since then, courts have interpreted the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment in a number of ways, and others have sought to abolish such a separation. In the end, this separation is an absolute necessity for any free country and must be maintained.

After a 12-year sojourn in Holland, the English Separatists came to North America in 1620 to separate themselves from the Church of England. The desire to practice one's religion separate from the government is echoed in the words of the English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon: "To prevent forever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out forever."

This separation is essential and no nation should ever be ruled as a theocracy. Being a Christian, I find vindication of this stance in the Bible. In 1 Samuel, the people of Israel come to Samuel and ask for a king, having been ruled by God through his prophets up until that point. Samuel is troubled by this request, and he tells them what will happen to them if they have a king: Their crops will be taken, their flocks will be taken, their sons and daughters will be conscribed to serve the king alone and they themselves will become slaves. But the Israelites don't care and want to be like the other nations so much that they ignore Samuel and insist on having a king.

Since then it has been up to man to rule man, and sadly we do a poor job of it. In the words of Winston Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Despite my insistence that church and state must be separate, people have used this separation to persecute the religious unnecessarily. The ACLU, for instance, forced Los Angeles County to remove a tiny cross from its municipal seal in 2004, and yet it also filed a lawsuit in 2006 to allow veterans and their families to place pentacles and other Wiccan symbols on headstones in federal cemeteries, a right I incidentally believe Wiccans should have.

Both of these were done under the pretense of separating church and state, and while I approve of the latter, the former is unnecessary and outrageous (for it seems that the ACLU overlooked the obvious — Los Angeles, along with San Diego, San Francisco, San Antonio and a host of other cities, are named for religious figures, which is no reason for them to be renamed).

I do not believe that this separation should be used as an excuse to purge all memory of or reference to religion from the public square.

Even beyond Europeans, this concept of separation of religion and government is a divisive issue. An example where religion, government and accepted societal norms clashed can be found as recently as last year.

In Afghanistan, a man named Rahman was sentenced to death in 2006 for converting to Christianity, and the basis for his sentence was the Sharia law that religious clerics in the country encouraged. It was only after a huge global outcry, especially from the West, that the man was released from prison, whereupon he promptly fled to Italy for asylum. In an indication of how divisive the issue is, around 500 Afghanis gathered at a mosque and demanded that Rahman be forced to convert to Islam or be killed. While Afghanistan's government frantically attempted to mollify the situation, the larger issue of the role of religion in the state is constantly changing.

When 500 British Muslims were asked in a survey in Feb. 2006 in the UK, "Would you support or oppose there being areas of Britain which are predominantly Muslim and in which Sharia Law is introduced," a surprising 40 percent of them said yes. What aspects of the huge field that is Islamic law would they want to see in use? Would it be for things as mundane as business transactions, marriage ceremonies and dietary laws, or would it extend to the treatment of criminals? The questions that come along with mixing religion and state and to what extent are ones that seems to produce even more questions than answers.

The Founding Fathers understood that a theoracy of any faith is far too susceptible to corruption and abuse power. We must therefore remember what is at stake and contemplate the bigger picture before flying off the handle over a little cross on a county seal.

Reach columnist Brandon Dennis at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.