Jon – Yes, those are the facts which I don’t dispute. You should be directing your “peace”ful comments to Mr. Barton who makes mountains out of molehills.
You appear to have some history training, so it is surprising that you would consider a fact irrelevant. Barton claims Jefferson started the church and invited the Marine band. There is no evidence for either claim. Real historians care about matters like that.
As an aside and as a psychologist, I have to laugh at a kind reaction formation that allows people to call you names and then sign off with noble sounding words like “peace.”

Omar – What is the proof that he did approve and brought the Marine Band in? Actually, we do have evidence that you bought the pens. You just wrote it down. Jefferson did not do that. Nor did anybody else. We know that the band was there but that is what we know. We do know that the chaplains were in charge of the services so I suppose there is some circumstantial evidence that they asked the band to play. But we don’t know. What I do know is that it is misleading to tell an audience that Jefferson did something we don’t know that he did.

If Jefferson is personally in charge of the building–which he was–by allowing the band and the services, is he not approving them? It appears to be a principle of logic. By allowing tax money to pay for the services and the band, he is approving it.

That is an incredibly weak argument. Tax money goes to fund all sorts of things that people don’t often personally endorse. If the founding Fathers had wanted to specify Christianity as the official religion of the land, they easily could have, but they did not. Your best argument is that something along these lines was implied, but why imply when they could have made it perfectly clear if they had wanted to.

The Senate chaplain was Dr. Thomas John Claggett, an Episcopalian, and the House chaplain was Rev. Thomas Lyell, a Methodist.

This is an amusing and fascinating observation about social status. Based on what I’ve read, denominational affiliation had as much to do with social standing and cultural strata as it did with theology. A city’s social and political leaders – the upper class, if you will – attended Episcopal services, while the Methodist church was ‘church for the people’. It’s amusing that this is reflected in the chaplaincy of the two bodies, the upper and lower houses of Congress.