Why is it that when I listen to the Christian Conservatives I get the impression that activist judges are a problem only if they are from the left. What ever happened to strict constructionism. Common law? We have a WRITTEN constitution.
I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provisions that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States, as far as it can be in any human authority. - Thomas Jefferson
"We have a WRITTEN constitution." ~ wbillh
Exactly.
"In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary
American colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background. There were around
three million persons in the thirteen original colonies by 1776, and
perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or
Puritan connection" (Douglas F. Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty in the
Modern World — (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), p. 120.
"The U.S. Constitution is a Calvinist's document through and through."
And because of that, they made sure that in America, one man’s liberty will
not depend upon another man’s (religious) conscience (as in Europe)!
Dr. George Bancroft, arguably the most prominent American historian of the
19th century — and not a Calvinist — stated:
"He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows
but little of he origen of American liberty"
The 55 Framers (from North to South):
John Langdon, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nicholas Gilman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Elbridge Gerry, Episcoplian (Calvinist)
Rufus King, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Caleb Strong, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nathaniel Gorham, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Roger Sherman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Samuel Johnson, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Oliver Ellsworth, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Alexander Hamilton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Lansing, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
Robert Yates, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
William Patterson, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
William Livingston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jonathan Dayton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
David Brearly, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Churchill Houston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Benjamin Franklin, Christian in his youth, Deist in later years, then back
to his Puritan background in his old age (his June 28, 1787 prayer at the
Constitutional Convention was from no "Deist")
Robert Morris, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
James Wilson, probably a Deist
Gouverneur Morris, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas Mifflin, Lutheran (Calvinist-lite)
George Clymer, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas FitzSimmons, Roman Catholic
Jared Ingersoll, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
John Dickinson, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Read, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Richard Bassett, Methodist
Gunning Bedford, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jacob Broom, Lutheran
Luther Martin, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Daniel Carroll, Roman Catholic
John Francis Mercer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McHenry, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Daniel of St Thomas Jennifer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Washington, Episcopalian (Calvinist; no, he was not a deist)
James Madison, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Mason, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Edmund Jennings Randolph, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James Blair, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McClung, ?
George Wythe, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Richardson Davie, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Hugh Williamson, Presbyterian, possibly later became a Deist
William Blount, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Alexander Martin, Presbyterian/Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Rutledge, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, III, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Abraham Baldwin, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Leigh Pierce, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Houstoun, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Few, Methodist
The founders identified the 13 colonies of their union as "Free
Protestant". As Protestants, their Declaration in 1776 that "all men are
created equal (in authority) " was consistent with the doctrine of their
founder, the man who first openly protested the hierarchy of men over Christians. His name was Martin Luther. He was a Roman Catholic priest from Germany who began the
"Protestant Reformation". He stated the following:
"I say, then, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man whatever has the right
of making one syllable binding on a Christian man, unless it be done with
his own consent.
Whatever is done otherwise is done in the spirit of tyranny...I cry aloud
on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I proclaim with confidence that no
kind of law can with any justice be imposed on Christians, except so far as
they themselves will; for we are free from all."
INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBERTY PRINCIPLES IN AMERICAN POLITICS
by Stephen L. Corrigan - http://w3.one.net/~stephenc/fun.html