Phil Valentine Chapter 2: Belief In God Is A Cornerstone Of Our Republic Heading 1 : Original Intent To understand what the Founding Fathers meant, you have to understand the times in which they lived. Back when the Constitution was crafted, individual states had their own state religions. Their individual state constitutions laid down the law regarding church and state. Not only did the states not separate the two, many required that they be joined. North Carolinas constitution said, That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the Divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit, in the civil department within in this state. Several states, instead of requiring an officeholder to be a Protestant, merely required a professed belief in God. These established state churches continued as late as 1833. Thats almost fifty years after the Constitution was ratified! The Founding Fathers were careful not to step on this right of the states to choose their own religion. They even spelled it out in the federal agreement between the states, promising that Congress would never try to usurp their power by establishing its own national religion. They also promised that the federal government would never pass a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So, instead of a separation of church and state, there is a clear --protection -- of religious expression outlined in the U.S Constitution. The separation is clearly between the states and the federal government. Dont get me wrong. I think having a state religion in any of our states today is a bad idea, but the Constitution clearly leaves that decision up to the individual states, not the federal government. Thats why all these rulings from the U.S Supreme Court on local school matters, like having prayers at ball games, are a violation of the very Constitution they swear to uphold. Knowing all that, the obvious question is, where did we get all this separation business to start with? How did we get from point A to point B, only to look back and find ourselves so far away from original intent? The problem can be summed up in one phrase: legal precedence. Instead of basing rulings on the Constitution, the Supreme Court oftentimes bases its rulings on prior Supreme Court rulings. What inevitably happens is that we find ourselves incrementally further and further away from original intent until the rulings bear little resemblance to this separation-of-church-and-state issue can probably be traced back to a Supreme Court ruling in 1947. In Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Hugo Black opined that the First Amendment forbids any interaction between church and government. He said that Jeffersons wall [of separation] ... must be kept high and impregnable. That was a reference to President Thomas Jeffersons 1802 letter t the Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. The state religion in Connecticut at the time was Congregationalism, and they had petitioned the president for aid in religious disestablishment, which Jefferson himself had advocated as governor of Virginia. The Danbury Baptists were disappointed when the president failed to intervene on the grounds that the federal government was strictly forbidden from interfering in state matters. Although Jefferson used the phrase a wall of separation between church and state in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, you have to look at the letter in context. The full statement reads, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. The State to which he referred is clearly Congress, which he calls the legislature. And, of course, hes right. The First Amendment clearly prohibits Congress from getting involved in the establishment of a national religion, and the reason is obvious. Congress is prohibited from doing so because that right was reserved for the states and the states alone. Its also interesting and instructive to note that this president, who is so widely quoted regarding his wall of separation, did absolutely nothing to hep the Danbury Baptists with their plight. Jeffersons inaction on this matter is a distinct indication that he regarded this as a state matter, not a federal one. Furthermore, advocates for wiping our government CLEAN of RELIGION read too much into the establishment clause. Theres nothing mysterious about it. The framers of the Constitution werent writing in code. They meant, literally, that Congress shall not establish a religion. In other words, Congress doesnt have the POWER to pass a LAW making Catholicism the official national religion. Oh, but they must have meant something more, these advocates insist. No! If theyd meant more, they would HAVE SAID MORE. If theyd meant that state legislatures had no business establishing state religions they wouldve said, Neither Congress -- nor the state legislatures - shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion. But they most unambiguously did not. Congress is the only entity restrained by the establishment clause. Not state legislatures. Not local school boards. Congress. Common Sense and FACTS go a LOOONNG WAYS !!!
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:21:49 +0000
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