Assault on Religion

The Assault on Religion

Rick Adamson, .9.22.17

© 2017 Rick Adamson

 

Whatever their beliefs, our Founders came from similar religious backgrounds. Most were Protestants. The largest number were raised in the three largest Christian traditions of colonial America—Anglicanism (as in the cases of John Jay, George Washington, and Edward Rutledge), Presbyterianism(as in the cases of Richard Stockton and the Rev. John Witherspoon), and Congregationalism (as in the cases of John Adams and Samuel Adams). Other Protestant groups included the Society of Friends(Quakers), the Lutherans, and the Dutch Reformed. Three Founders—Charles Carroll and Daniel Carroll of Maryland and Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania—were of Roman Catholic heritage.

By the year 1702 all 13 American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. This support varied from tax benefits to religious requirements for voting or serving in the legislature. Several colonies had an "established" church, which meant that local tax money went to the established denomination.

Most of the settlers came from Protestant backgrounds in Britain and the Continent, with a small proportion of Catholics (chiefly in Maryland) and a few Jews in port cities. The English and the German Americans brought along multiple Protestant denominations.

As a result, freedom of religion became a basic American principle, and numerous new movements emerged, many of which became established denominations in their own right. Church, for the most part, meant denomination.

Thus, these men never intended for religion to be shunned by government but, rather that government not select one of the prevailing protestant denominations to be the nationally sanctioned church.

They, therefore, said, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

What this really meant was that Congress was to stay the hell away from the subject which they have done, for the most part.

The idea being that the people could believe in and practice as they wished without interference by the secular government. It did not mean that they did not value religious believes or that the government should discourage such beliefs.

Look what John Adams said about the matter:  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

I think he was saying that, given all of the freedoms Americans have under the Constitution, those rights would be abused and mocked by people of low character and that religious beliefs, of almost any persuasion, promoted moral conduct and improved character.

George Washington said “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. personified this connection, and described it well in his letter from a Birmingham jail: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

Someone once said if you can’t get what you want by law, use the courts. Just look what the Supreme Court has done:

√ 1962 ban on public school prayer

√ 1980 invalidation of state law requiring Ten Commandment display in public school

√  1992 rule that made it unconstitutional for a Christian club to meet on campus of public school

√  2005 display of Ten Commandments in two KY courthouses ruled unconstitutional

And the assaults continue in state court houses and legislatures, class rooms and the media.

This is all made possible by a United States Supreme Court decision pursuant to Everson v. Board of Education (1947). The Court was asked to interpret the First Amendment's prohibition on laws "respecting an establishment of religion." "In the words of Jefferson," the justices famously declared, the First Amendment "was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and State'...[that] must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

Thus the metaphor "wall of separation between church and state" was born. Note that these words are not in the Constitution or any law but have been legislated by the Court.

In arriving at their conclusion the Court relied on a 1802 letter written by President Jefferson (after being elected the third President) to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. The Baptists had written the President a "fan" letter in October 1801, congratulating him on his election. In a carefully crafted reply, Jefferson endorsed the persecuted Baptists' aspirations for religious liberty:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, 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 & State.”

The letter was in fact a political statement written to reassure pious Baptist constituents that Jefferson was indeed a friend of religion and to strike back at the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him as an infidel and atheist in the recent campaign.

The Danbury letter was written 15 years after the Constitution was adopted and, in fact, Jefferson was in France at that time.

Contrary to the Court’s finding, Jefferson's record as a public official in both Virginia and the nation shows that he initiated practices and implemented policies inconsistent with the modern Supreme Court's "high and impregnable" wall of separation.

Even among the metaphors proponents, this has generated much debate concerning the proper dimensions of the wall. Whereas Jefferson's wall expressly separated the institutions of church (Protestant denominations at the time) and the central government, the Court's wall, more expansively, separates religion and all civil government.

It is my hope that this erroneous decision can be corrected soon. Keep FedGov and the Courts out of it and let the states and the people do as they please.

For more see: Undeniable