BATS: Insight on the First Amendment

Blogging Against Theocracy Silliness


In "honor" of "Blogging Against Theocracy," a.k.a. "Marginalizing Christianity on its Most Sacred Holiday", a post on "Insight on the First Amendment."

This information provides some insight on the First Amendment as it deals with religion. Most of the information here is from David Barton’s “Original Intent.”

Did Thomas Jefferson say that religion should have no influence on the state? Not in the least. He did, however, point to the true scope and intention of the First Amendment prohibition preventing CONGRESS from making a law respecting an establishment of religion:

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

From the Annals of Congress from June 8, 1789 to September 25, 1789, containing the records of the discussions of those who drafted and approved the First Amendment:

AUGUST 15, 1789. Mr. Sylvester had some doubts…He feared it [the First Amendment] might be thought to have a tendency to abolish religion altogether…Mr Gerry said it would read better if it was that “no religious doctrine shall be established by law”…Mr. Madison said he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law.”

This record gives us some insight as to how the Founders wrestled with the wording of the First Amendment, in the hopes that it wouldn’t be interpreted to “abolish religion altogether” as it is being interpreted by many today.

We are not to attribute this [First Amendment] prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence, than the framers of the Constitution) – Joseph Story

The real object of the [First A]mendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects. – Joseph Story

All men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others. – George Mason

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established. – James Madison

The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments to be acted upon according to their own sense of Justice and the State constitutions. – Joseph Story

The Founders were wise men, typically educated far beyond the eduation of most people today. They were also a people of morality and integrity, I doubt they fully realized what might be done with the Constitution by a people that were no longer educated OR moral, but instead wanted to substitute the wisdom of their own lusts for power and pleasure for that of the original intent.

Regarding that, one final bit on the interpretation of law and the Constitution (this applies to current law, and especially the Constitution.

The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it. – James Wilson, signer of the Declaration, member of the Constitutional Convention, and nominated by President George Washington as an original Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court

The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is to construe them according to the sense of the sense of the terms and intentions of the parties. – Joseph Story

In other words, if you wrote a letter to someone, would you want them to interpret it as you meant it…or would you want them to interpret it in a “living” sense, based on their perceived needs and their own agenda?

I think we know that answer to that one, so why should the interpretation of the Constitution, our nations’ highest law, be any different? And it is obvious what the Founders intended with the First Amendment: not the exorcism of faith from public policy, but the prevention of an establishment of a national religion.

And no one is advocating a national religion, which probably would be a theocracy, so that’s why all this bunk of “Blogging Against Theocracy” is shadow-boxing at best, but is more likely just a veiled attack on the influence of Christian morality in public policy.