The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Supreme Court got Jefferson's "wall of separation" wrong)

I thought your first rule of honest Constitutional interpretation was to make an effort to gather the intent of the lawmakers from the text of the document. Why are you jumping over the text of the amendment to the letters of someone who was not even one of the lawmakers who gave legal effect to the amendment?

Sigh. :^(

Grow up.

My first rule of honest constitutional interpretation is, as I apply common sense, to find out what basic reading skills tell me about a law.

Because God gave me the gift of reason that I might have the ability to solve complex intellectual problems. I have elected to exercise that gift.

And you are going to answer to God for the way that you are using his gifts.

It seems that, by force of habit, you are trying to depict the intentions of the Founders as being so lofty that, without your illuminating guidance, the common man has no hope of making sense out of the Constitution, especially when it comes to overlooking your unconstitutional emphasis on absolute c&s separation.

>>>Where might one be able to find and read the debates leading up to the adoption of the First Amendment, that one might discover the spirit in said debates and be increased in knowledge of this matter?<<<

Try here:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwed.html

There are several sources: the Journals of the Continental Congress; Elliot's Debates; Farrand's Records; and the Letters of the Delegates of Congress.

Note that the so-called "1st Amendment" was created via a consolidation of several amendments; and it was submitted to the states as the third Amendment. It became the 1st Amendment by default after the original 1st and 2nd Amendments failed ratification by the states.

>>>Although Presidents Washington and Adams, for example, did nothing unconstitutional by issuing proclamations recognizing "Thanksgiving and Prayer," or whatever religious related special day that was, such actions confused the division of powers of the 1st and 10th Amendments . . . I think that Eisenhower's good intentions with the Pledge would be beyond reproach today if he had instead encouraged the state governments to use their 10th A. power to address religious issues to make state laws which included "under God" in the Pledge.<<<

I disagree. The purpose of the religious clauses of the 1st Amendment was not to prohibit all support of Christianity by the federal government; but rather to ensure that the federal government did not support one Christian denomination over another. Joseph Story's "Commentaries on the Constitution" discusses this matter.

>>>Although Presidents Washington and Adams, for example, did nothing unconstitutional by issuing proclamations recognizing "Thanksgiving and Prayer," or whatever religious related special day that was, such actions confused the division of powers of the 1st and 10th Amendments . . . I think that Eisenhower's good intentions with the Pledge would be beyond reproach today if he had instead encouraged the state governments to use their 10th A. power to address religious issues to make state laws which included "under God" in the Pledge.<<<

I disagree. The purpose of the religious clauses of the 1st Amendment was not to prohibit all support of Christianity by the federal government; but rather to ensure that the federal government did not support one Christian denomination over another. Joseph Story's "Commentaries on the Constitution" discusses this matter.

I don't think that we're on the same sheet of music. (I will look up Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution.)

Let me clarify that I don't mind when Presidents proclaim religious holidays and include "under God" in the Pledge. Indeed, I have often pointed out that Jefferson saw nothing unconstitutional about church services held in the hall of the House of Representatives at the nation's capitol, for example. This is because that I know that I have the right to simply ignore such official looking associations of religion and government if I so choose.

My concern is that constitutional ignorance is epidemic, and probably has been for a long time. So despite the good intentions of some Presidents where federal religious gestures are concerned, such gestures have possibly done more harm than good with respect to blurring the 10th A. division of powers of the federal and state governments in the minds of constitutionally ignorant people. This is because when Presidents get sloppy about distinguishing between the federal and state government religious powers, then constitutionally ignorant people are undoubtedly more inclined to accept when crooked judges tell them that the 1st A.'s prohibitions on religious powers of the federal government were meant to apply to the state governments as well.

The following links are evidence of epidemic constitutional and government ignorance.

http://tinyurl.com/npt6t
http://tinyurl.com/hehr8

>>>Where might one be able to find and read the debates leading up to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (not the First Amendment), that one might discover the spirit in said debates and be increased in knowledge of this matter?<<<

JSTOR has the transcripts, but it requires membership. There may be other transcripts online, but I am not sure where to find them.

The paper, "CONGRESS'S POWER TO ENFORCE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS: LESSONS FROM FEDERAL REMEDIES THE FRAMERS ENACTED", by Robert J. Kaczorowski, highlights the fact that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was merely a continuation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, with its power being derived from the Fugitive Slave laws. That is, according to Kaczorowski, "The Republican leaders and supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 insisted that Congress possessed as much constitutional authority to protect and enforce human rights and equality as it had exercised to protect and enforce the property right in slaves."

You might also try these books: "The Debates in Congress on the 14th Amendment", by Marc D'Angelis; and "Freedman, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876", by Stephen P. Halbrook. Your county library may be able to get copies from one if its affiliates to loan you.

>>>>Please tell us what rules or principles of Constitutional interpretation were applied to the text of the First Amendment's religious clauses, to arrive at the conclusion that, "The purpose of the religious clauses of the 1st Amendment was...to ensure that the federal government did not support one Christian denomination over another?"<<<

In addition to wording of the 1st Amendment itself that ensured (or tried to ensure) the free exercise of religion in a dominant Christian nation, and from the historical fact that there was not the slightest bit of suspicion that Washington, Jefferson, and other early leaders who invoked Christianity in ceremonies, holidays, and religious practices within the seat of the federal government were doing anything contrary to the constitution; the words of the founders and early justices support that claim.

For example, Oliver Ellsworth, a Connecticut delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in explaining to the people the clause that prohibits a religious test for public office, stated, "A test in favor of any one denomination of Christians would be to the last degree absurd in the United States. If it were in favor of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Quakers, it would incapacitate more than three-fourths of the American citizens for any public office and thus degrade them from the rank of freemen."

Of course, anyone doing objective research on the subject will quickly find that one of the first moves of the new Congress was to establish a Christian chaplain to perform Christian prayer for the new Congress.

And then, there is the following by Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of 1833:

"The real object of the [first] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. . . .

The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues;— these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. . . .

Now, there will probably be found few persons in this, or any other Christian country, who would deliberately contend, that it was unreasonable, or unjust to foster and encourage the Christian religion generally, as a matter of sound policy, as well as of revealed truth. In fact, every American colony, from its foundation down to the revolution, . . . did openly, by the whole course of its laws and institutions, support and sustain, in some form, the Christian religion; and almost invariably gave a peculiar sanction to some of its fundamental doctrines. And this has continued to be the case in some of the states down to the present period, without the slightest suspicion, that it was against the principles of public law, or republican liberty."

Story added, "... the whole power over the subject matter of religion is left exclusively to the State governments to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State constitutions."

There is also this one by Story: "Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation. . . "

Now to Thomas Jefferson...

"I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision 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 U.S. 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." (from a letter to Rev Samuel Miller, 1808)

Two days after Jefferson sent the letter to Danbury (with the Separation of Church and State clause) he attended public worship services in the U. S. Capital building. During his presidency he also authorized the use of the War Office and Treasury building for church services; he provided, at the government's expense, Christian missionaries to the Indians; he put chaplains on the government payroll; he provided for the punishment of irreverent soldiers; and he sent Congress an Indian treaty that provided funding for a priest's salary and for the construction of a church.

Regarding state and local support of Christianity, in 1822 Jefferson wrote: "In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting-house. The court-house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others' preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony."

Also in 1822: ""In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other."

And back to 1800: "The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."

And, finally, this one: "But I am in hopes their good sense will dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them, they had better go to the mountain: that they will find their interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science of their country, and that the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

That doesn't sound like a man hell-bent on "separation of church and state" in the manner left-wing extremists like the ACLU have been espousing.

And finally there is this quote from the 1st Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Jay:

"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers. And it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." (Jay in a letter to Jedidiah Morse February 28, 1797)

And this one from the 2nd Chief Justice, John Marshall:

"The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it." (Marshall in a letter to Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833)

And this one from the 2nd Chief Justice, John Marshall:

"The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it." (Marshall in a letter to Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833)

But why did Virginia legislators give up the opportunity to write Jesus' name into law decades earlier?

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." -- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography 1821

Actually, you included a reference that probably explains why Jesus' name wasn't written into law. The reference reinforces my suspicion that early American Christians were actually on their guard against each other with respect to any one Christian denomination gaining control of the law.

"The real object of the [first] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. . . ." --Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of 1833