States can establish State Religions, IAW the US Constitution

1st amendment and my State's Constitution's protection of free speech | 12/4/01 | H.Akston

[Doctor Doom]

PS-I have much faith that the values of the Christian belief can stand on their own quite well without support of state or federal support.

[schmelvin]

Re: Establishing state religion:

I wonder which state would become the first Muslim state? New Jersey, maybe? How long before they declared jihad on neighboring states? I can't think of a better way to tear this country apart than to have states establishing their own religions.

[rwfromkansas]

Quoting Paine won't get you anywhere with anybody with morals. Anyway, in regards to those founders that are actually worthy of respect (unlike Paine), they said such things. It makes you wonder how committed Madison was to his ideals though when he introduced....ironically enough, along with Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Punishing Sabbath Breakers in Va. This bill passed and when bills against the 1st Amendment were removed from the state by the legislature, this one stayed.

[rwfromkansas]

to be quite honest, this country is ALREADY torn apart....red vs. blue. Religious division would only speed us to the necessary end, gracious separation.

[Doctor Doom]

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect."
-James Madison

"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. "
-James Madison

"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-James Madison

[Doctor Doom]

Excellent point, my friend.

[rwfromkansas]

Show me he supported a strict separation in regards to the states and I will listen....by ACTION, not quotes.

[Doctor Doom]

... Congress, in voting a plan for the government of the Western territories, retained a clause setting aside one section in each township for the support of public schools, while striking out the provision reserving a section for the support of religion. Commented Madison: "How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment."
-(Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 206. The Congress here referred to was the Continental Congress; the Madison quote is from his letter to James Monroe, May 29, 1785, according to Morris.)

Here [in the Virginia statute for religious liberty] the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant on which all authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate sanction of a vast majority, comprizing [sic] every sect of Christians in the State. This act is a true standard of Religious liberty; its principle the great barrier agst [against] usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices, at least thro' which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine & human.
-(James Madison, "Monopolies. Perpetuities. Corporations. Ecclesiastical Endowments," as reprinted in Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detatched Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-555. The "Detatched Memoranda" is a manuscript, written sometime after Madison left office in 1817, in Madison's own hand, with notes he made in preparation for the arrangement and publication of his public papers, a task he did not complete before his death in 1836.)

This assertion [that Madison was committed to total and complete separation of church and state] would be challenged by the nonpreferentialists, who agree with Justice Rehnquist's dissent in the Jaffree case. Contrasted with the analysis set forth above, Rehnquist insisted that Madison's "original language Ônor shall any national religion be established' obviously does not conform to the Ôwall of separation' between church and state which latter day commentators have ascribed to him." Rehnquist believes Madison was seeking merely to restrict Congress from establishing a particular national church. There are three problems with this contention. First, nothing in Madison's acts or words support such a proposition. Indeed, his opposition to the General Assessment Bill in Virginia, detailed in the "Memorial and Remonstrance," contradicts Rehnquist directly. Secondly, all of Madison's writings after 1789 support the Court's twentieth-century understanding of the term "wall of separation." Third, the reference to Madison's use of "national" simply misses his definition of the word. Madison had an expansive intention when he used the term national. He believed that "religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgiving and fasts ... imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion." He commented in a similar way about chaplains for the House and Senate. Historical evidence lends no support to the Rehnquist thesis. And clearly Jefferson, even though absent from the First Congress, seems a far more secure source of "original intent" than Justice Rehnquist.
-(Robert S. Alley, ed., The Supreme Court on Church and State, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 13.)

[rwfromkansas]

But wait, there is a contention in the Memorial and Remonstrance that Christianity is the "true" religion also since it calls others false....that would seem to violate the establishment clause by officially declaring a religion as the true one. Therefore, in the very Memorial and Remonstrance, supposedly helping the liberal interpretation of the First Amendment, actually opens MORE issues. No tax-supported church. Fine. But, it is wrong to claim the Supreme Court as wrong and Rehnquist as wrong.

[rwfromkansas]

BTW, the Northwest Ordinance says schools are encouraged to teach religion.

[rwfromkansas]

SC as right and Rehnquist as wrong I mean

[Doctor Doom]

But wait, there is a contention in the Memorial and Remonstrance that Christianity is the "true" religion also since it calls others false....that would seem to violate the establishment clause by officially declaring a religion as the true one.

That was his personal opinion.

Expanded on here:

"Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered."
-James Madison

[Doctor Doom]

PS - It is late. Guten tag.

[William Terrell]

Who have been more tyrannical that the seculars Hitler and Stalin? So what makes your religion so much better than the rest?

Atheistic tyranny seeks idealistic control of your body and your means of livlihood. Religion seeks control over your soul and would regulate what you do with your body and livelihood to save your soul, happily destroying any guarantees of physical liberty, such as those found in the Constitution, to that end. Example: war on drugs.

Check out Islamic regimes. Religious tyrannies may not outright kill your body, but they kill any reason you have to live while letting you live.

As I write this, I've been a Christian for many years. I would hate to see any Christian sect run a government. I have nothing aginst evangelicals, for instance, and admire their faith in many ways, but I think the worse tyranny mankind has seen would come about under evangelical dictatorial government.

[Tinman]

BTTT, for later comment

[H.Akston]

"I wonder which state would become the first Muslim state? New Jersey, maybe? How long before they declared jihad on neighboring states? I can't think of a better way to tear this country apart than to have states establishing their own religions"

The taking of life by a state would not be allowed under the fifth amendment. The penalty for a jihad would be death. False Islam could be weeded out this way, and help cleanse a little bit of it from the earth for the benefit of mankind. As for tearing this country apart, unity is not as important as Liberty.

[Virginia-American]

Several New England states had established religions into the 1840's

[H.Akston]

I always appreciate a great Madison quote :)

His 250th birth year is almost up!

[H.Akston]

Many rich liberals, I think, try to impose their twisted version of Christian charity (compulsory charity for third parties to have to pay) by way of the ballot box. They vote for higher taxes out of "love" for their fellow man, forgetting that they themselves can always pay more if they choose to.