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.