(1950), in the case of Doremus v. Board of Education of Borough of Hawthorne, 5 N.J. 435, 75 A. 880 (N.J. 1950), stated:
We consider that the Old Testament, because of its antiquity, its contents, and its wide acceptance, is not a sectarian book when read without comment. Cf. Vidal v. Girard’s Executors.3918
The adherents of those religions [Jew, Catholic, Protestant] constitute the great bulk of our population. There are [other] religious groups … but in this country they are numerically small and, in point of impact upon our national life, negligible. … And it is not to say that because a religious group is small, it thereby loses its constitutional rights or that it is not entitled to the protection of those rights. The application is that some of our national incidents are developments from the almost universal belief in God which so strongly shaped and nurtured our people during the colonial period and the formative years of our constitutional government, with the result that we accept as a commendable part of our public life certain conditions and practices which in a country of different origins would be rejected. …
Again, take the instance of an atheist:—he has all the protection of the Constitution … but he lives in a country where theism is in the warp and woof of the social and governmental fabric and he has no authority to eradicate from governmental activities every vestige of the existence of God.
With reference to saying the Lord’s Prayer, this court found “nothing in the Lord’s Prayer that is controversial, ritualistic or dogmatic. It is a prayer to “God, our Father.” It does not contain Christ’s name and makes no reference to Him. It is, in our opinion, in the same position as is the Bible reading.”3919
While it is necessary that there be a separation between church and state, it is not necessary that the state should be stripped of religious sentiment. … The American people are and always have been to our origins and the direction which it has given to our progress are beyond calculation. It may be of the theistic, … that belief in God shall abide. … The day the children should pause to hear a few words from the wisdom of the ages [Scriptures] and to bow the head in humility before the Supreme Power. No rights, no ceremony, no doctrinal teachings; just a brief moment with eternity.3920
But it is clear, we think that the sense of the [First] Amendment does not serve to prohibit government from recognizing the existence and sovereignty of God and that the motives which inspired the amendment and the interpretation given by the several departments of the Federal Government concurrently with and subsequent to the submission and adoption of the amendment are inconsistent with any other conclusion. … The fact is that the First Amendment does not say, and so far as we are able to determine was not intended to say, that God shall not be acknowledged by our government as God.3921