“[T]he real object of the [F]irst amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among CHRISTIAN sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which would give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”
— J. Story, III, Commentaries on the Constitution § 1871 (1833), as quoted in Jaffree v. Board of School Com’rs of Mobile County, 554 F.Supp. 1104, 1114 (D.Ala. 1983)(emphasis supplied).
Thanks. So, fifty years after the Constitution was ratified, somebody expressed the opinion that the Founders meant Christianity even though they didn’t say Christianity? And this guy’s ability to see the penumbra of the Constitution, his ability to interpret the document as a Living Document should matter to me?