Read the Beforeitsnews.com story here. Advertise at Before It's News here.

By John Malcolm
Contributor profile | More stories

Story Views
Now:
Last hour:
Last 24 hours:
Total:

America’s Courts Have Been Violating the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause for Three Decades

Monday, May 14, 2012 19:39

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

“A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT.” ~BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

By Jerry A. Kane | May 12, 2012 | Canada Free Press

For thirty years the ACLU and its atheist hordes have been in state and federal courts vigorously marginalizing Christians and uprooting public memorials and symbols of the nation’s Christian heritage. Any cross, crucifix, sculpture, statue, figurine, or carving that could trigger memories of America’s Christian founding has been targeted for eradication from the public sphere.

The Framers wrote the Bill of Rights to restrict the powers of the federal government, which means the First Amendment was intended to protect religion from an intrusive government, and not the government from religion.Even though over two-thirds of the American public believes the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state,” the truth is the Framers of the Constitution never entertained such a notion. For three decades now, rulings by the courts ordering the removal of Christian symbols from public property have violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment begins with the words, “Congress [i.e. the federal government] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The Framers didn’t want the federal government establishing a “state church” (as England and some European Countries had at the time) or interfering with the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment kept the federal government from interfering with the people’s right to establish their own churches and denominations and worship freely.

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. … Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”—Thomas Jefferson The suggestion that Christian symbols displayed on public property could amount to a violation of the Establishment Clause would be laughable to the Framers.

The concept of a Judeo/Christian God or nature’s God was embraced by the Founders:

Fifty-two of the 55 Framers of the U.S. Constitution were members of established orthodox churches in the colonies:

Congregationalist-7
Deist-1
Dutch Reformed-2
Episcopalian-26
Lutheran-1
Methodist-2
Presbyterian-11
Quaker-3
Roman Catholic-2

In fact, the Framers enshrined the concept of the Judeo/Christian God and nature’s God in the Declaration of Independence:

When …it becomes necessary for one people to …assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them …

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America … appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies …

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

At the time the First Amendment was written, several states were dominated by churches, e.g., Connecticut was Congregationalist, Massachusetts was Puritan, Virginia was Baptist, and Pennsylvania was Quaker. The people in those states chose the religion they preferred, and they didn’t want the federal government imposing any particular sect or denomination on their states.

It’s safe to assume that when the Framers wrote the First Amendment, they understood that:

God establishes the place of nations in the world.
God created man.
God endowed man with certain unalienable rights.
God is the supreme judge of human conduct.

As Mark Levin writes in Men In Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,“the Declaration of Independence … is an explicit recognition that our rights derive not from the King of England, not from the judiciary, not from government at all, but from God. … Religion and God are not alien to our system of government, [sic] they’re integral to it.”

If the Framers intended the Establishment Clause to erect a “wall of separation” between the Judeo/Christian God and nature’s God and government, they would have included the “separation of church and state” notion in the First Amendment or would have at least introduced and discussed it at the first Constitutional Convention. But not one of the Framers ever mentioned it. None of the Congressional Records of the discussions and debates of the 90 Founding Fathers who framed the First Amendment contains the phrase “separation of church and state.” The phrase is not found in the Constitution, the First Amendment, or in any of the notes from the Convention.

The idea of a “wall of separation” between church and state surfaced in 1947 when the Warren Court lifted the “wall of separation” phrase from a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. Jefferson used “wall” as a metaphor to address the Baptists’ concerns about religious freedom, and to clarify for them that the federal government was restricted from interfering with religious practices. Jefferson’s letter explained that the First Amendment put restrictions only on the government, not on the people.

The truth is the current “separation” doctrine is a relatively recent concept and not a long-held constitutional principle. The Warren Court took Jefferson’s “wall of separation” phrase out of context and reinterpreted the First Amendment to restrict people instead of government. And now some 65 years later, 69 percent of the American people believe the First Amendment actually contains the “separation of church and state” phrase.

In his dissenting opinion in the 1985 ruling against silent prayer in public schools, Chief Justice William Rehnquist decried how the Warren Court’s “wall” notion undermined the Framers’ original intent of the First Amendment:

“There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was constitutionalized in Everson. But the greatest injury of the ‘wall’ notion is the mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. [N]o amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true. The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”

Read the full article here.