Posted on 09/22/2008 7:18:35 AM PDT by andrew roman
Some troubling e-mails following my article "First Amendment 101 – Whoopie’s Lesson," in which I attempted to clarify for Whooopie Goldberg – co-host of ABC’s “The View” – some of the finer truths regarding the establishment clause, has prompted me to expand the tutorial for her (and for those who suggested I ought to do more research before commenting on such “nuanced” and “complicated” matters as the first amendment).
From the top.
The oft-alluded to “separation of church and state” clause exists nowhere in the federal Constitution. (This should be a booming “well, duh” factoid by now). Thomas Jefferson’s use of the term in a personal letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802 - eleven years after the Bill of Rights was ratified - and regularly cited by modern secularists and anti-constitutionalists (a phrase coined by talk-show host Mark Levin, I believe) as the smoking gun to the Founding Fathers’ endorsement of removing God from the public square, was actually written by Jefferson as an attempt at finding common ground with the Baptist community, of which he was not a member.
Jefferson wrote:
“I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Jefferson’s well-selected - and appropriate - words were meant as an assurance to the Danbury Baptists that there would never be an officially state-sanctioned religion for the United States of America.
So then, referencing my first "article," and attempting to respond to the e-mails I’ve received on the matter, what exactly do the first words of the first amendment – the “big sixteen” - really mean?
James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” said that the first amendment was worded as it was because “the people feared one sect might obtain a preeminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.”
Note the word “sect.” It helps to illustrate a dirty little secret that may come as a surprise to the enlightened. The vast majority of the American population at the time of the founding was not only religious but also Christian. (There. I said it!) And comprising that overwhelming majority were many different Christian denominations - or “sects.” Thus, as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, one of the founders of Harvard Law School and considered “the foremost of American legal writers” wrote:
“The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government."
The Founders, in writing the establishment clause, were actually prohibiting the exclusivity of one Christian sect from becoming the national sect - not keeping religion altogether out of the public square. Read the words of North Carolina Governor Johnston during his state’s convention to discuss ratification of the Constitution. It lends wonderful insight into the national mindset regarding the ratification debate. He said:
“The people of Massachusetts and Connecticut are mostly Presbyterians. In every other state, the people are divided into a great number of sects. In Rhode Island, the tenets of the Baptists, I believe, prevail. In New York, they are divided very much: the most numerous are the Episcopalians and the Baptists. In New Jersey, they are as much divided as we are. In Pennsylvania, if any sect prevails more than others, it is that of the Quakers. In Maryland, the Episcopalians are most numerous, though there are other sects. In Virginia, there are many sects; you all know what their religious sentiments are. So in all the Southern States they differ; as also in New Hampshire. I hope, therefore, that gentlemen will see there is no cause of fear that any one religion shall be exclusively established.”
Quite obviously, there was never an intention to remove God from public view - only the desire to keep God in plain view without having to fear any sort of reprisal from the government.
Justice Joseph Story also wrote:
“We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment [in the First Amendment] to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution)."
Despite this, in 1947’s landmark case Everson v. Board of Education, the First Amendment was treated to a new, restrictive interpretation, reviving and subjecting the “separation of church and state” syntax to a twentieth century makeover. Thanks to Justice Hugo Black, the following words essentially paved the way for all subsequent restrictions placed on public religiosity. Wrote Black:
“The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”
I don’t even own a black robe, and I am saying categorically that he could not have been more wrong.
The First Amendment "erects" nothing. Rather, it limits what Congress can do - namely, prohibiting the establishment of a state religion. It also prohibits Congress from restricting the free exercising of one’s religion, whatever it may be.
It’s certainly true that neither Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists or the writings of Joseph Story constitute law. Nor do the elucidations of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers. The Constitution itself - in its succinct brilliance - is indeed the law of the land, and anything else is ultimately fodder for think tanks, opinion columns and debating societies. But to whom else should we turn to help explicate the meaning of the Constitution? To whom should the judiciary turn to in helping to determine the Constitutionality of disputes? Isn’t it invaluable to understand exactly what the founders intended when they composed the Constitution as well as the interpretations of their contemporaries? Aren’t their expositions and thoughts regarding the very document they created (of which there is an enormous wealth available) absolutely crucial to any interpretation of the Constitution? Isn’t it essential to put it all in proper context?
And isn’t it clear that the creators of the Constitution did not ever mean to vanquish religion from public life?
There.
Some research for you.
Can we agree that the old cliché “freedom OF religion is not freedom FROM religion” is entirely consistent with the Founder’s concept of America?
ping
And reading this review of the alleged separation of church and state brings home the point that judges interpret the Constitution. The quality of the judges appointed by a President to the Federal courts is important. It was judges who have legislated from the bench to ban school prayers, for example.
And let’s not get started with the constitutional scholar, Whoopi Goldberg. She had the audacity to ask John McCain if she has to worry about being a slave, based on McCain wanting to appoint judges who consider the original intent of the Founding Fathers in their interpreting the Constitution.
Everybody knows what Jefferson meant. Everybody. The athiests and commies just love to start a fight by twisting the obvious. It’s all part of the juvenile ‘challenge authority!’ crap.
This is a good treatment of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, which is pretty easy to understand. IMHO public understanding of the "freedom of the press" clause is at a far lower level even than that of the religion clauses. For the simple reason that journalism has erected a Newspeak barrier to understanding of the relation between journalism and the First Amendment.It took me decades of thought to attain the level of understanding I now claim. That understanding is best seen in this thread.
With her obvious mentality, she would probably be better off. Another without a script and liberal talking points, a nothing.
Selectively quoting Jefferson’s use of the term “separation of church and state” is the same thing liberals do when they selectively quote Eisenhower’s term “military-industrial complex”. Anyone who reads more than just a few sound bites from either man would know what they really meant.
Jefferson wanted no religion to be officially promoted or forbidden. That did not mean the government should be atheist.
Eisenhower wanted an active citizenry who would forever be educated and engaged in their self governance. He was not anti-military or anti-industry, he was pro-democracy. His worst fear was that America would go the way of Nazi Germany... a nation where the citizens allowed themselves to be ruled by a central government lead by a strongman dictator, trading all their liberty for a false sense of security. Read Lincoln’s thoughts on the Dred Scott decision and you’ll see Eisenhower repeating many of the same sentiments. Citizens who abdicate their responsibility to self govern by allowing the Supreme Court and the President to rule for them (rather than the states, Constitution and the Supreme Court) are doomed to lose their liberties.
In 1860, the Supreme Court dictated that states had no right to prohibit slavery within their borders. In 1973, the Supreme Court dictated that states had no right prohibit abortion within their borders. How long before the people take back control of the Constitution and Congress (the people’s House)?
Mr Roman’s attempt to educate Whoopie, et al, is along the lines of trying to educate a sock by storing a dictionary in it.
Some learn late, some never learn, that there is a tenuous link, at best, between fame and intellect. In Whoopie’s case, that lesson will never be learned.
" I, A B. will bear true allegiance to the Delaware State, submit to its constitution and laws, and do no act wittingly whereby the freedom thereof may be prejudiced."
And also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
" I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."
And all officers shall also take an oath of office.
Other states have similar provisions. Most talk of the sects that the article speaks to. The only sects they speak against are Church of England and Catholics which were few in number in the Colonies. Most Catholics in the new world were from France in Canada and from Spain in Florida and further South.
I am old enough that I learned this in grade school. My children and grand children were not. This shows just how fast they are re-writing our history.
It is important also to religion that one of the critical factors of the Constitution was a very novel idea, that it was written by men, and thus subject to the flaws of men, and can be changed.
In Europe, and most of the rest of the world, for that matter, the traditions were that God and heaven decreed nations and also decreed their leaders, their kings, queens and princes. And being ordained by heaven, that automatically gave them the right to rule for life. (The belief that royalty had a healing touch in England lasted almost to the end of the 17th Century, ending with William III.)
The American founding fathers, while being respectful to God, decreed that the US Constitution was written by “We the People...”, not heaven. This meant that its meaning was in black and white, not reliant on interpretation of the “will of heaven”.
It also meant that the Constitution could be changed, and that no *sect* could claim that only its interpretation of the Constitution represented the “will of heaven”. And yet this is very different from rejecting God altogether.
All told, in the long run, not proclaiming our republic as being legislated by heaven is actually more respectful of God than rationalizing the endless perfidy of man by justifying our swinishness as not just authorized, but demanded by heaven.
Something Bill Clinton would have been a natural at.
That's not true.
Jefferson, although what many people might call only a “Christian Deist”; stated “the teachings and philosophy of Jesus Christ are the most sublime the world has ever known..”. He personally authored a work for the evangelizing of the Indians entitled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”, and approved, as President, several acts appropriating federal funds for the Christianization of the Indians. He had no qualms about the influence of religion in government, (indeed, he like most of the founders considered Christianity an indispensable support for self-government!) but he certainly opposed government interference in religion!
I stand corrected. Sounds like Jefferson sure did indeed use the US Government to promote Christianity. What I meant to infer (but instead said poorly) was that there was no intent to declare Christianity the official religion of the US Government, though clearly it was and still is the “indispensable support” for the founding of our government and clearly was the unofficial religion of America during Jefferson’s lifetime. Jefferson was wrong to use the federal government to proselytize to Native Americans. It was improper for the federal government to do so. He also held slaves while working to prevent the spread of slavery and decrying slavery as evil. Out of the hundreds of slaves he owned, Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime, and five in his will. He was a man of many contradictions....
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