Posted on 09/15/2017 12:31:26 PM PDT by DFG
That is exactly it's purpose and what it meant back in 1787. It was not speaking towards the issue of Muslims, Hindus or even Jews.
People have since interpreted it as applying to those other religions, but at the time it was written, those other religions were not even in the Founders minds. The prohibition of religious tests mentioned in the constitution was not comprehended to apply to those other groups.
Yep!
These were some of the most visionary men in history. They may have been culturally, and in many cases religiously, Christian, but they were not narrow-minded men. I can’t believe that they never anticipated that people might come to the US with different religious beliefs and that, if they did, they would not be ‘covered’ by the same principles of religious tolerance that the various Christian denominations were. Or that there would not be times when the federal government would have to intercede in a state’s “business”.
Jews have been here since the 1600s, and have had significant moral and spiritual influence for the good in our society. If we had kept things in the states as some seem to think the Founders intended in this regard, many of those Jews would not have been able to hold public office.
To say that ‘what was the norm back then, cannot be unconstitutional now’ is false, because we have outlawed a number of “norms” from back then – including slavery.
The founders were creating a general, principled system – not dictating how each future, perhaps unforeseeable, issue might be decided by that system and the generations that inherited it.
In this regard, I think it is a special case, and I will address your point further on a later date.
Yet actual, living Jews were barred from holding public office, and have been hated and discriminated against by many “Christians” throughout history - regardless of this ‘special case’ status that you perceive.
The various state religious ‘tests’ for holding public office were incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution, clearly exhibiting a preference for one or some religions over others. But some of them remained long after we had become a much more religiously heterogeneous society. They were only finally ended by the Supreme Court in 1961 - in a case that actually involved someone of no faith at all, in my own state of Maryland: an atheist who had been barred from becoming a notary.
Religion is an intensely personal issue between a human being and God. You can’t ‘make’ anyone religious or even know if anyone truly is or not; you can’t keep those who do profess faith from actually being outright fakes and hypocrites. (And I’d much rather have an honest atheist or agnostic in a public office than a hypocritical Christian.)
There should be no religious tests for public office, and should never have been, under this Constitution.
You should read some of the stuff John Adams wrote. It's pretty hard core intolerant from a religious aspect. So too was it among many of the other Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin. If you go further, and look at the writings of the various delegates to the convention, and the delegates to the various state ratifying conventions, it gets even harder to argue they they anticipated other religions being part of American Culture.
Many state constitutions of the time were explicit in stating they were Christian. Many states had "official" state religions at the time. It is unlikely that they would have ratified a document that purports to dilute a doctrine which they had already expressed in their own governing documents.
Jews have been here since the 1600s, and have had significant moral and spiritual influence for the good in our society. If we had kept things in the states as some seem to think the Founders intended in this regard, many of those Jews would not have been able to hold public office.
As I said, I think a lot of people of that era regarded Jews as a special case. All the educated knew that Judaism was the foundation of Christianity, and so I can see them accepting Jews under the umbrella of religious tolerance. I cannot however see that they had any intentions or in fact any thought of accepting Muslims or other religions as belonging in their society, at least not in any great numbers.
To say that ‘what was the norm back then, cannot be unconstitutional now’ is false, because we have outlawed a number of “norms” from back then – including slavery.
Going through the process of amendment is one thing. Making up a new meaning for what they said at the time is another. The question is this: Do we accept their meaning at the time, or do we pretend they meant something different to suit our modern political preferences?
The founders were creating a general, principled system – not dictating how each future, perhaps unforeseeable, issue might be decided by that system and the generations that inherited it.
The Founders were creating a pragmatic method of preventing religious denominational differences between the various states from blowing apart the fragile coalition they had laboriously pieced together.
They knew that if the Federal portion of the Union devolved into religious strife, all the various states would cease to participate in it, and the British could simply come along and collect up the broken pieces.
The thought of making America safe for Pagans never occurred to them. It simply wasn't on their radar at the time.
If you’ll recall, the religions that the ‘tests’ were mainly meant to bar from public office, were Jews and Catholics.
Do you think states should be permitted to have policies like that now, or have we wisely gone beyond that?
I know they were heavily persecuted by the Catholics, especially in Spain and Portugal, but I don't know of any organized Protestant persecutions against them, at least up until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.
Certainly I don't know of any widespread persecutions of them in the early US, but there was a lot of anti-semitism that manifested here after the 1900s. I do know that the Southern Confederacy had at least one Jewish Senator back in the 1860s.
The various state religious ‘tests’ for holding public office were incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution, clearly exhibiting a preference for one or some religions over others.
The religious tests of the various states were in fact legal and accepted at the time. It wasn't until the Courts started applying the 14th amendment doctrine to the states that this became an issue, and this is an obvious misapplication of the intent of the 14th amendment.
But some of them remained long after we had become a much more religiously heterogeneous society.
I acknowledge that society changes. I also recognize there is an appropriate methodology in place to make existing laws conform to social changes, and that is the amendment process. Simply reinterpreting existing law to mean something different than what it was original intended when it was created is dishonest and it is a methodology that is rife with moral hazard and unintended consequences.
Liberalizing the meaning of law beyond it's original intent is contrary to reason and is in fact despotic.
They were only finally ended by the Supreme Court in 1961 - in a case that actually involved someone of no faith at all, in my own state of Maryland: an atheist who had been barred from becoming a notary.
How can an atheist "swear"? Since the entire structure of the system is founded on a belief in God, this creates a paradox.
Religion is an intensely personal issue between a human being and God.
It is also the glue that holds our Society together. I've done much research regarding the bonds of society, and much of it's cohesion and practicality is the consequence of believing in Divinity. Attempts to form functional atheist societies have been abject failures. Not only have they been failures, some of them have been horrific disasters, such as Russian and Chinese communism.
There should be no religious tests for public office, and should never have been, under this Constitution.
There should be no religious tests for Federal offices, but the States were always entitled to do as they pleased. Let's keep our history accurate, and let's also keep our understanding of it accurate.
What states did back in the early days of the Republic might have been wrong headed, but they had the legal authority to do it.
Do you think states should be permitted to have policies like that now, or have we wisely gone beyond that?
I think that States should have changed their laws as a result of the changes in society, not have a new paradigm imposed upon them by Judicial diktat.
This is the difference between consent and force.
On the question of banning religions nowadays, my current thinking is that we can't allow Islam to exist in our society because it's tenets are incompatible with our values and our society. I do not see any other religion as comprising the same degree of threat to our civilization as does Islam. (Other than Kali worship)
Never. It is not their job to impose their own morality on others and claim it is the law. Their job is to apply the law as it was written and intended, not to massage it to fit their preferred outcome.
We didn’t start out discussing Islam; I agree this is a problem. However, I don’t think that what people believe – or say they believe – is as important a factor as what ACTIONs beliefs might lead them to.
Islam teaches certain things that are simply incompatible with our society. Discrimination between males and females is locked into the religion, and cannot be separated out of it. It is inherently discriminatory, and it is inherently violent. To tell them they can't beat their women is tantamount to telling Christians they have to bake cakes celebrating homosexuality.
We either impose our Judeo-Christian norms on their religion, or we ban their religion. There is no middle ground.
(A ban on immigration from countries harboring terrorist groups, for instance, is not religious discrimination - it’s a self-defensive act in a time of war.
That would be a sophist attempt at achieving the one thing by pretending it is the other.
We don't allow the execution of women for adultery in this country - that is murder; etc.)
Or a lot of other stuff that Islam urges it's followers to do.
But if Islam itself is incompatible with our values and society, what do you propose we do, consistent with our ideals, about the ones who are here and have been here for perhaps decades – who are citizens and have lived quiet, law-abiding lives?
This reminds me of the question regarding what to do if you become pregnant with an unwanted child. The simple answer is not to get into that situation. Trying to figure out a way out of a mess we shouldn't have gotten in to in the first place is another can of worms.
Pragmatically speaking, nothing can be done about them. They are here, and there is no valid argument for making them leave, however, we should make it clear that we will not sanction their religion as acceptable.
They’ve already sworn ‘loyalty oaths’ by becoming citizens.
Which means something to adherents of Western culture, but means absolutely nothing to adherents of Islam.
My point here is simply that Individual Liberty, as a founding, national ideal, is a very messy thing. The nation whose ideal it is will naturally experience crises of changing times/events, and struggle to retain as much as possible of the integrity of its original principles in the face of that change.
Well see, I don't believe "original intent" included Muslims. I don't think the idea even occurred to the Founders, and certainly not to the delegates who ultimately ratified the Constitution.
We can’t always look to the past for answers to entirely new circumstances.
No, but we can change existing law to reflect new circumstances, provided we do it through the "consent of the governed" process. Doing it by Tyrannical Judges is contrary to the more important concept of this nation's founding; Representative Democracy.
Allowing Judicial tyrants, is throwing out the more important principle in favor of a lesser one.
We impose control, but we do not impose our ideas on them.
But how do you ‘ban’ a religion, and how does that have any more effect than just waiting for assimilation – short of a long inquisition?
How do you "ban" a religion? Well you don't in the real sense, but you can very much do so in terms of social acceptance. Look at what has been done to the KKK and the "neo Nazis". They are social pariah, and rightfully so.
I don't suggest we attempt to create a hostility towards people that practice Islam, but we certainly should not change our society to accommodate any of their doctrines. No hijabs or other face covering, no banning of pork products in schools and prisons, no break time for daily praying. Simply don't assist in their efforts to keep practicing this religion.
Waiting for them to assimilate is a plan if we actually encourage them to assimilate. It is not a plan if we don't.
I disagree with you about the Court stepping in on certain issues; in the case we’ve discussed, freedom of religion and freedom from coercion with regard to it are such basic, essential rights that they should not have been left to the states, especially when, at the time, the only important religious contentions were between various Christian sects, and between those sects and Judaism.
I can agree with you that it ought to be regarded as a "natural right", but within the legal structure created by the US Constitution, it is not acknowledged as such a right. The problem with what you think should have happened is that the states were self governing entities who held the power of governance over their own people, and were the result of what their own people wanted, and wanted to believe. In other words, the states held the power to do as they wished, and they wished to make some religions "official" in their states, though some expressed ideas of religious tolerance for others.
I will point out that the Constitution itself refers to "Our Lord" (meaning Jesus) at the end of it, and it also gives the President Sunday's off while he's considering a bill, which is a specific reference to working on the (Christian) Sabbath.
The assumption of all the foundation document is a society ultimately based on a Yahweh deity. Many of the founders were Deists, which is actually a lot closer to Judaism in principle than it is to Christianity.
In other words, the premise of certain strain of religion is incorporated into the design at a fundamental level.
Perhaps there were instances where the founders had no choice, given the times, but to compromise, if they wanted to create a Nation.
That is exactly the situation they were in. They had to accept slavery because it would blow apart the coalition if they didn't, and they had to accept denominational differences because it would blow apart the coalition if they didn't. It was all very pragmatic.
Slavery is something they could not have done much about but to wait until it came to a head one way or another, which it did.
They did do something about it. They made certain it was legal and they incorporated a protection for it in the new Constitution. A lot of people don't know this, but Article IV, Section 2 is a defacto fugitive slave law. At the time (1787) all the states but Massachusetts were still slave states, and Massachusetts only became a "free" state as a result of creative interpretation of their new state constitution by the Judiciary.
But leaving these religious issues to the states seems to have only entrenched and prolonged prejudice - which has extended even to our day, considering the bordering-on-vicious religious threads that have shown up on FR - among Christians!)
They didn't have the luxury of imposing a different outcome on the states. The States would have told them to go "pound sand" if they had tried. They did what they could get away with.
Thanks very much for the conversation.
And to you as well. I enjoy discussing things amicably, especially if someone disagrees with my thinking.
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