[P-Marlowe]

When President George Washington issue his famous 1789 Religious Proclamation he was intermeddling in religious matters and trespassing upon the authority of God Almighty.

So when you become President, you lose your first amendment free speech rights? You throw your religious convictions out the window and you only serve the secularists and the atheists?

[MuddyWaters2006]

when you become President, you lose your first amendment free speech rights?

I speak from the view of the Jeffersonian republicans. Saint George Tucker, as professor of law at the College of William and Mary and one of the leading exponents of Jeffersonian republicanism, in 1803, published the first extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution after its ratification and later its amendment by the Bill of Rights. Tucker wrote, "Liberty of conscience in matters of religion consists in the absolute and unrestrained exercise of our religious opinions, and duties, in that mode which our own reason and conviction dictate, without the control or intervention [involvement] of any human power or authority whatsoever. This liberty though made a part of our constitution, and interwoven in the nature of man by his Creator." On the question of religious recommendations, Tucker wrote: “"The proclamation of the two former presidents recommending fasting and prayer, were of this nature; they were an assumption of power not warranted by the constitution, or rather prohibited, by the true spirit of the third article of amendments [the First Amendment]"

A government officer, employee or agent has no First Amendment or free speech right (or any other right) to assume any sort of jurisdiction, authority or power over the religion of his fellow man. God has absolute and exclusive authority, including the authority to use reason and persuasion, in matters of religion.

The civil governments of the temporal sphere have no legitimate authority whatsoever over religion, not even the "recommendatory" authority to issue religious recommendations to fast, pray, give thanks or express public humility via Executive or Congressional proclamations.