Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Bryan Fischer, Executive Director
FIRST AMENDMENT, PART 2
In honor of the 219th anniversary of the establishing of the United States Constitution (September 17, 1787), I am devoting several Updates to clarify the intent of the Founding Fathers in enacting the First Amendment. In my first column, last Friday, I made the point that the Founders intended the First Amendment to apply only to Congress. It was never intended to restrict what state governments, city governments, principals, teachers, or students were allowed to do when it comes to matters of religious expression.
So, if the First Amendment applies only to Congress, then only Congress can transgress it. The next question, then, is in what way Congress can violate the First Amendment. That is the subject of today's Update.
1. Only Congress can violate the First Amendment
2. The only way Congress can violate the First Amendment is by making one Christian denomination the official church of the United States
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing a law regarding the "establishment of religion." The word "establishment" had a precise and technical meaning at the time. It did not refer to the public acknowledgment of God or even to supporting religion in general. Rather, to "establish" a "religion" meant to give one particular Christian denomination preference in law, and require citizens to participate in its observances and support it with their tax dollars.
As Webster defines it, to "establish" means "to make (a church) a national institution," and an "established church" is "a church recognized by law as the official church of a nation and supported by civil authority."
England, of course, had such an established church, the Church of England.  This inevitably led to a kind of religious tyranny which prompted our Pilgrim and Puritan forefathers to flee their native land so that they might be free to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience.
Having seen the repression which inevitably accompanied an "established" Christian church, the Founders were determined that there would be no "established" national church here as there was in England. And so, as a check on the power of the central government, they wisely prevented Congress from establishing any one particular Christian denomination as the nation's official church.
By the term "religion," the Founding Fathers were not thinking of religion in the broad terms we do today (the religion of Christianity, of Judaism, of Islam, of Buddhism, etc.), but of particular varieties of the Christian faith, what we would call "denominations" today. Over 99% of the population of the United States at the time of the founding would have identified with the Christian religion in one form or another, with less than one percent identifying themselves as practitioners of Judaism, and virtually no one identifying with any other religion, or with atheism.
Thus the Founding Fathers used the term "religion" much as we did in my childhood. On the playground, we'd ask each other, "What religion are you?" by which we meant, "Are you Baptist, or Methodist, or Roman Catholic, or Seventh Day Adventist, etc?" By the term "religion," the Founders did not mean religion in general, or the public acknowledgment of God, but specific institutional varieties of the Christian faith.
This is confirmed by the alternative proposals brought forward the day the  final wording of the First Amendment was adopted. George Mason, "The Father of the Bill of Rights," proposed that "no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others." (emphasis mine)
Here was a yet another proposed version: "Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another," clearly using "religion" to mean the Christian faith. (emphasis mine)
And yet another proposal put it this way: "Congress shall make no law establishing one religious society in preference to others." (emphasis mine)
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," made clear what the Founders were intending to accomplish by the First Amendment. It was ".that Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience." (emphasis mine)
So clearly what the Founders were intending to do was to keep the federal government from granting any one specific Christian denomination a preferred status in law and compelling citizens by law to observe its ordinances.
The Founders intended to protect the right of states to handle religious liberty matters in any way they saw fit. States, in fact, were free to have "established" churches if they chose. An argument can be made that nine or 10 of the 13 original states had "established" churches at the time of the Revolutionary War - that is, they had granted certain Christian denominations preferred status in law and supported them with tax dollars.
A study commissioned by Congress in 1854 concluded, "At least 10 of the 13 original states provided as regularly for the support of the Church as for the support of the Government."
State governments gradually came to see that having an official "state" church was no better than having an official "national" church, and so by 1833 no state in the Union had an established church, which certainly represented the path of wisdom and liberty. The point is that the Founders intended to leave such matters to the states, and to prevent the national government from enshrining one particular Christian denomination as the national church.
The bottom line is that, as long as Congress does not pass a law establishing  one Christian denomination as the official church of the United States, it can pretty much do anything it wants when it comes to religious expression. And so every session of Congress from day one has been opened in prayer by a chaplain paid with taxpayer dollars. Congress has regularly called the nation to days of prayer and fasting and thanksgiving, and presidents have done the same.
Congress can issue as many religious proclamations as it wishes, can declare a Year of the Bible if it chooses to, can honor "Christian Heritage Week" if it would like to do so, and so on. As long as Congress does not grant preference in law to one specific Christian denomination, it has great freedom and latitude to publicly acknowledge God and urge citizens to do the same.
Thomas Jefferson's conduct while in office bears witness to this. Although he is a celebrated icon of the secular left, Jefferson, as the head of the executive branch of the federal government, started no less than three churches during his eight years as president. All three met in federal buildings, one in the Capitol itself, another in the Treasury Department, and a third in the War Department. He himself regularly attended church services held in the Capitol, and even had the Marine Band play at its worship services.
Jefferson was the first superintendent of public instruction in Washington,  D.C., and in that capacity ordered the first two textbooks for the D.C. public school system. They were the Bible and a book of hymns by Isaac Watts.
Three times Jefferson signed legislation authorizing the use of federal funds to support Catholic missionaries working among Native American tribes.
All of these Jeffersonian antics were perfectly permissible because none established any single Christian denomination as the official church of the United States.
So the bottom line is this: only Congress can violate the First Amendment, and it can only do so by establishing one specific Christian denomination as the official church of the United States.
Part 3 |
