Dangerous Territory in New Catholic Town, Ave Maria

The first immigrants ventured to the American colonies with the desire to worship freely. Religious wars and disputes within Germany and France, as well as, the English Civil War prompted Pilgrims, Puritans, nonconformists, and some Catholics to migrate to a new land. The religions of these new people were primarily Christian and were not guided by the desire to be tolerant of all religions, but the Constitutional Convention believed that a federally sanctioned church would tear apart, rather than bind, a newly formed union together. The prominent Baptist minister from New England, Isaac Backus, commented on the idea of government being run separately from church saying when, "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." The phrase "separation of church and state" is traced all the way back to 1802 when Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to the Danbury Baptists and referred to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as the foundation for having a "wall of separation" between church and state. In the year 2007, can the United States continue to delicately balance religious freedoms alongside a "wall of separation" between church and state when a wealthy, avidly Catholic man is seeking to establish an entire town centered on religious beliefs?