In my opinion, anyway. 
Posted on 12/04/2001 5:38:59 PM PST by H.Akston
Only "Congress" is truly restricted by the 1st Amendment. It's up to the people of each State to restrict each of their State governments from establishing a religion, in their State's Constitution. Of course, if they chose not to do so and a religion gets established by say, HYPOTHETICALLY, Vermont's legislature, would it really bother the rest of us? Wouldn't they be free to do so? If not why not? What is tyrannical to some is not tyrannical to others. Now if Vermont's hypothetical religion deprived people of life liberty or property without due process of Law, then the Feds could step in under the 5th Amendment or the 14th. I would see no harm though, in Vermont declaring the state religion to be for example, Christianity. True Christianity could not be tyrannical. Of course problems could arise with interpretations of what, say, charity means. But liberty is not always neat.
This may be a right NEVER exercised by a State, but it's important to recognize the right, and that it exists. People don't have enough respect for the autonomy of the States - or for the 10th Amendment, which guarantees powers to the people in them that the Constitution does not delegate to the Federal Government or that the Constitution itself doesn't prohibit. The Constitution only prohibits Congress from abridging free speech or establishing a religion. States still have the power to do so, unless restrained by some other means, such as a State constitution.
(Even better)
It's unlikely that they could do so today. The Supreme Court, which outlawed school prayer on the basis of the 14th Amendment, certainly would not stand for established churches.
The Supreme Court decision is here and here. I have my doubts about it, but it is something one should be familiar with if one discusses the topic.
This was Jefferson's great mistake, if one assumes that he was a great supporter of state's rights. He and Madison campaigned against established churches, and disestablished Virginia's Anglican/Episcopalian Church. They needled the New England States about doing away with their Congregationalist establishments.
Had Jefferson and Madison really wanted stronger state governments and a weak central government, they would have encouraged states to retain their established churches. What would keep states from coalescing into one uniform and homogenous nation more than separate state churches? Sectarian differences would have hindered New England, the Middle Atlantic and Middle Western States or the Southeast and South Central states from forming larger sections arrayed against each other.
To say that states could still establish churches after the 1830s is to miss the point. A right unexercised is a right lost. If you disestablish your state church you won't be able to get it back. And the bulwark against amalgamation that state religious establishments provided is also lost.
If the European experience is any guide, the burden of supporting established churches would have made us a less religious people, which would also have pleased Jefferson. In part, Jefferson didn't understand what would further his own goals. But also, he was more of a centralizer than some give him credit for being, although in a backhanded way. During the 1790's Jefferson wanted to use the states as a bulwark against Federalist power in the central government. Later, when his own party was in power, he was less concerned with this problem. But beyond purely constitutional questions, Jefferson's idea of freedom would sweep away local cultures, elites, and restrictions and help to create -- for better or for worse -- a freer, but also more homogenous, more unified nation. Religious disestablishment was an important part of that idea. The moral is that individual freedom and local autonomy aren't always in the same camp.
Apparently, only left wingers have a problem having the Bill of Rights applied to State govt---allows the leftists to control (example --gun control in California.).
Thomas Jefferson got a letter from a citizen in Pennsylvania who was very upset that somebody said that the US constitution prevented Pennsylvania from naming the quacker religion as being the state religion. Jefferson wrote the man and said that the US constitution did not restrict the state legislatures from doing that. He said Pennsylvania was free to do that precisely because of 'the wall between church and state'. It was the federal government that was restricted from interfereing. That's what the term 'wall between church and state' actually meant when Jefferson first wrote it. That letter is the original source of the phrase. Today it is perverted to have a different meaning in many people's eyes.
The significance of these things is that any state in America is free to set its' own character through its' own laws. For example, in the state of california they've decided that in schools when little boys and girls are 11 or 12 years old that an adult homosexual would come to class as a positive role model and to get young boys thinking if they too might be gay like that nice man. In other states, like Kansas, they may choose to teach different things in the schools.
Obviously the federal government has become too much of a monster to tolerate the original meaning of the constitution.
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In my opinion, anyway.
Section 16. Free exercise of religion; no establishment of religion.
That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.
Thanks to all for interesting posts.
Those in authority should not lead them.
Not a public penny should be spent to support any belief system. Any belief system worth its salt needs no public support.
"Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the general [federal] government. IT MUST THEN REST WITH THE STATES." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 in a letter to Samuel Miller (notice how long after the First Amendment this quote is).
"Libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with HERESY AND FALSE RELIGION, are withheld from the cognizance of FEDERAL tribunals." -- Jefferson, Kentucky Resolution
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?"
-James Madison
"Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it is certainly the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others."
-George Washington
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in (establishing the American government) had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
-John Adams
"As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other business government has to do therewith."
-Thomas Paine
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