"Congress should write fewer laws regarding church & state."
-Ron Paul
It is well known that Ron Paul is an advocate of states' rights and of a strict adherence to the Constitution. So it should be no surprise that he believes that states should be allowed to do what they please as voted by local constituents with little-to-no interference from the federal government. He believes that establishment clause of the First Amendment was intended to stop the federal government from creating (and forcing worship of) an official state church, not drive worship from the public's eye.
"The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life." -Ron Paul
I believe James Madison would agree with Rep. Paul on this issue.
On August 15, 1789 James Madison said, "he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience....”
Being deeply religious himself, Rep. Paul believes that religion does what no government can do: teach morality and civility to individuals. He believes that moral and civil individuals are guided by their own sense of right and wrong and this leaves them with less need for external governing. He believes what we are seeing is a sort of power struggle between religion and the state because many religious individuals put their faith in God before the state. From what I gather, Rep. Paul believes it is almost as if there is a pseudo-proxy war being fought between churches and the state disguised as the separation of church and state.
The closest I have personally witnessed the lines between "church and state" possibly being blurred would probably be during late 2004 when I was in boot camp for the Marine Corps. Does this count?
