Congressional Issues 2010
SOCIETY
The "Endorsement" Test
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One of the greatest myths of our day is the Supreme Court-invented lie that government must not "endorse"
Christianity. Before examining the myth, let's look at the facts:
America's Religious Foundation
The Declaration of Independence clearly endorses Christianity, encouraging Americans to appeal to "the Supreme
Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions," "with a firm reliance on the
Protection of Divine Providence," observing "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," and
reminding the world of our belief in certain "self-evident truths," "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights."
The Articles of Confederation, America's first Constitution, concluded with an acknowledgement that
"it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress."
The Meaning of Disestablishment
Before America declared its independence from Britain, the Church of England was the officially established church in many jurisdictions. This fact had long
bothered many Baptists and Presbyterians, and they were especially annoyed at state support for the Church of England after we declared our independence from the
mother country.
Thus from 1776-1785 America disestablished the Church of England, but Christianity was still the religion of the land. But rather than establish some other
church, every state in the Union entirely ended the existence of state churches.
Before Americans would ratify the new Constitution, the states demanded guarantees that their post-Revolution disestablishment would remain untouched by the new
federal government. This was the purpose of the First Amendment.
| Most secularists do not understand that Christianity is not tied to any specific church denomination. In fact, you could abolish
all churches and all denominations and still have a thriving Christian nation. |
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The purpose of the First Amendment was not to terminate America's status as a nation "under God." The Constitution did not
make America a secular nation. In 1892 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment
protected America as a Christian nation with no established church.
The modern Supreme Court has turned the First Amendment on its head. What originally was designed to keep the federal government from imposing a particular
Christian church on the states, is now used to deny the Founders' belief that government is an ordinance of
God, that America is a nation "under God," and that America is
specifically a Christian nation. Today, the Court holds that all of the Founding Fathers were wrong to endorse Christianity. They were wrong to forbid atheists
from saying "so help me God" in a court of law. They were wrong to make a distinction between religion and atheism.
In Allegheny v. ACLU, the Court condemned a nativity scene depicting the birth of
Christ based on the "separationist" mythology first set forth in Everson v Bd of Education
(1947). In Allegheny, the Court
- squarely rejects any notion that this Court will tolerate some government endorsement of religion. Rather, [we] recognize[] any endorsement of religion as
"invalid," id., at 690, because it "sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an
accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community," id., at 688.
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Allegheny County v.Greater Pittsburgh ACLU,
492 U.S. 573, 595 (1989)
By speaking of "true" religion and "false" religion, the Founders clearly endorsed one and relegated the
other to at least a "second place." By requiring a profession of faith before allowing anyone
to take an oath to God, the Founders made atheists feel like "outsiders." By proclaiming days of
prayer and national humiliation, the Founding Fathers implied that those who would not humble themselves before God were "not full members of the political
community."
By making polygamy a crime, the U.S. Supreme Court, following Thomas Jefferson, endorsed Christian ethics
over non-Christian ethics. By criminalizing acts which are approved by certain South American and Asian religions, The Supreme Court of the 19th century endorsed
Christianity and restricted the religious freedom of non-Christian religions. The Decalogue
(the Ten Commandments) was the basis of America's legal system, and a Christian interpretation of the Commandments at that.
Bible distribution halted in
Mo. public school
By The Associated Press
01.10.08
ST. LOUIS — A rural Missouri school district's long-standing practice of allowing the distribution of Bibles to grade-school students
is unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.
For more than three decades, the South Iron School District in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis, allowed representatives of
Gideons International to give away Bibles in fifth-grade classrooms.
After some parents raised concerns and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit two years ago, the district altered its policy —
the Gideons and others were still welcome to distribute Bibles or other literature before or after school or during lunch break, but not
in the classroom.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry on Jan. 8 granted a permanent injunction in Roark
v. South Iron R-1 School District, ruling both practices were illegal.
The purpose of both practices "is the promotion of Christianity by distributing Bibles to elementary
school students," Perry wrote. "The policy has the principle or primary effect of advancing religion by conveying a message of endorsement
to elementary school children."
firstamendmentcenter.org: news |
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Recent Supreme Court cases have reversed everything the Founding Fathers believed about America as a nation "under
God." As the Court described these cases in its Allegheny opinion:
Of course, the word "endorsement" is not self-defining. Rather, it derives its meaning from other words that this Court has found useful over the
years in interpreting the Establishment Clause. Thus, it has been noted that the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion "preclude[s]
government from conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred." Wallace v. Jaffree, 472
U.S., at 70 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment) (emphasis added).
- Accord, Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S., at
27, 28 (separate opinion concurring in judgment) (reaffirming that "government may not favor religious belief over disbelief" or adopt a
"preference for the dissemination of religious ideas");
- Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S., at 593
("preference" for particular religious beliefs constitutes an endorsement of religion);
- Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 305
(1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring) ("The fullest realization of true religious liberty requires that government . . . effect no favoritism among sects or
between religion and nonreligion").
Moreover, the term "endorsement" is closely linked to the term "promotion,"
- Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S., at 691 (O'CONNOR,
J., concurring), and this Court long since has held that government "may not . . . promote one religion or religious theory against another or even
against the militant opposite,"
- Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 104 (1968). See
also Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S., at 59-60 (using
the concepts of endorsement, promotion, and favoritism interchangeably.
The Court in Allegheny said official mention of Christianity violates the First
Amendment, just as the Engel Court struck down a school prayer which no more created a
denominational establishment than the theistic language of the Declaration of Independence. Justice Stewart, dissenting, pointed out this inconsistency:
I do not believe that this Court, or the Congress, or the President has by the actions and practices I have mentioned established an "official
religion" in violation of the Constitution. And I do not believe the State of New York has done so in this case. What each has done has been to recognize and
to follow the deeply entrenched and highly cherished spiritual traditions of our Nation - traditions which come down to us from those who almost two hundred years
ago avowed their "firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence" when they proclaimed the freedom and independence of this brave new world. [Note
10: The Declaration of Independence ends with this sentence: "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." ]
[370 U.S. 421, 451]
But Justice Stewart was outnumbered by the Everson decision, which had set the basic framework
for all subsequent First Amendment cases:
The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can
pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from
church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs
or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions,
whatever they may be called, or whatever from they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly,
participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law
was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.' Reynolds v. United States,
supra, 98 U.S. at page 164.
[330 U.S. 1, 15-16]
The Court in Torcaso echoed this mythology:
The power and authority of the State of Maryland thus is put on the side of one particular sort of believers - those who are willing to say they believe in
"the existence of God."
[367 U.S. 488, 495]
We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally
force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions
as against non-believers,10 and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different
beliefs.11
(Footnote 11 mentions the religion of Secular Humanism.) Torcaso
overturned the beliefs of every single person who signed the Constitution. They believed that the government should distinguish between "religious beliefs
or disbeliefs." If a person had no religious beliefs, he would not be allowed to take an oath to God.
(They also believed that if the State of Maryland in their state constitution chose to exclude atheists from public life, the federal judiciary had no
constitutional power to amend the Maryland constitution.)
The Declaration of Independence was written by and appeals to and endorses those who believe in God. Every State that endorsed the Declaration prohibited
atheists from holding public office, and some of them (e.g., Rhode Island) even denied citizenship to atheists.
There can be no doubt that the Founders endorsed Christianity over atheism. They also believed that good government would promote
religion, not atheism. Read the words of the Founders.
- Here in the religious-freedom clause of the First Amendment, then, was no philosophe's Deistical
declaration, and no Encyclopedist's rationalistic denunciation of Christianity. What the few words of the clause intended to convey was the essence of
the article on religion drafted by George Mason for the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, as modified then by Madison:
- "That Religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason and
conviction only, not of violence or compulsion, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience,
unpunished, and unrestrained by the magistrate, unless the preservation of equal liberty and the existence of the State are manifestly endangered. And that
it is the mutual duty of all, to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity toward each other."
- The First Amendment established no "wall of separation" between State and Church; that phrase and that concept
appear nowhere in the Constitution, or in any other official national document. Thomas Jefferson, in 1802, wrote a letter to an assembly of Baptists in
which he argued that the First Amendment was intended to construct "a wall of separation between Church and State." But though doubtless that is
what Jefferson desired from the First Amendment, it is by no means what Congress—and particularly the Senate—had in mind when it passed the Amendment in
1789; nor was the phrase "wall of separation" employed by Madison or any other notable advocate of the Amendment.
- Justice Joseph Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution (1833), offered a fuller and more adequate explanation
of the purpose of this religious-freedom clause. It was adopted, Story wrote, because different sects predominated in different [p.438]
states; and
- it was impossible that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendency, if the national
government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power...Probably at the time of the adoption of the
Constitution, and of the amendment to it now under consideration, the general if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to
receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt
to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not
universal indignation."[17]
- Careful examination of the opinions of members of the Congress in 1789, and of the public press of that time, confirms
Story's opinion: the Americans approved religious toleration, and left the field of religious establishments solely to the separate states; but Americans
generally endorsed the idea of a religious foundation for their political order. This stand was reaffirmed by Justice William O. Douglas, distinctly liberal
in his principles, in the Zorach case (1952), when he wrote the Supreme Court's majority opinion:
- "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as
wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality
to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma...To hold that government may not encourage
religious instruction would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be
preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe...We find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be
hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence."[18]
- Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p.436-438.
17. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, as quoted in The Constitution of the United
States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (edited by Edward S. Corwin; Washington: Government Printing Office, 1952), pp. 758–59.
18. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 313–314 (1952), as quoted in Corwin (ed.), The Constitution of the United States, op. cit., pp. 762–63. |
Kevin Craig opposes the modern myth of "separation of church and state." The real meaning of the modern phrase is "the separation of God
and State." It no longer refers to "churches," or as Madison often called them, "ecclesiastical bodies." Any government that will not
acknowledge itself to be under God is a government that believes it is God.
False Religions
next: Government Should Promote Christianity, According to America's Founding Fathers
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