Challenge

[Ed Darrell]

Like economics, it all depends on where one sits.
 
I thought it was the government setting the parameters of appropriate religious activism of the government (which is zero activism, generally), since the people determined that as the proper limits of the governments' actions.
 
There is a difference between my asking to put up a stone monument to the Beatitudes in a public park where private displays are often made, and the government putting up such a display on its own.  The question more correctly should be:  Who is the actor?  
 
If the answer to the question is "a governmental entity or a person acting for a governmental entity," then religious action is generally proscribed.
 
This proscription preserves the separation of church and state.
 
The First Amendment's proscription on Congressional action simply closes off one last door by which government might have been subverted into taking religious action.  In Articles I, II, III and IV, the Constitution gives no branch of the federal government and no state government any duties or privileges with regard to religion.  The First Amendment closes off the possibility that Congress could provide any other authority for any branch of government or a quasi-governmental body to act in religion.  
 
Beyond the First Amendment, generally the government is silent about religious expression, and has been mostly silent since 1789.
 
Ed Darrell
Dallas

Francis Beckwith <francis.beckwith at mac.com> wrote:
Gene:

Isn’t there something odd about the government setting the parameters of appropriate religious activism on the grounds that religion and the government should be separate?  If they should be separate, then the government should remain silent on the subject? But it hasn’t.  So, I can only surmise that the position you are holding is that the government and the government alone determines the limits of a religion’s public theology.  But that doesn’t that violate your principle that the government and religion should remain separate?  What am I missing here?

Frank

On 7/29/05 2:51 PM, "Gene Garman" <ggarman at sunnetworks.net> wrote:

I have just been challenged by the list manager to establish the meaning of the Establishment Clause in terms of an understanding which establishes its meaning as an establishment of "religion," in contrast to the revisionist understanding, for example, of Justice Rehnquist, in his 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree dissent, in which, by adding words, he asserts the wording really means (in his opinion) "a national religion."

Actually, I thought no one on the list was ever going to ask. Thank you.

Since joining the list, I have deliberately withheld any comment in respect to the Free Exercise Clause, because I knew the challenge would ultimately be presented.
I will do my best to convince you that the wording of First Amendment is not ambiguous and is entirely consistent with James Madison, Founding Father and cochair of the joint Senate-House conference committee which drafted the final version of the First Amendment, who provided numerous subsequent examples of his understanding, as detailed in his "Detached Memoranda," wherein he wrote: "Strongly guarded ... is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States."

The Free Exercise Clause commands: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The word "thereof" is the word which needs to be filled with understanding. According to English 101, the word "thereof" gets its entire meaning from whatever it is to which it refers. The Free Exercise Clause obviously refers back to the Establishment Clause and to whatever the Establishment Clause means.

If you accept Justice Rehnquist's revision of the Establishment Clause, it means "a national religion." If that is the fact, "thereof" MUST mean "a national religion." The Free Exercise Clause then is to be understood as, Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise of "a national religion." Think about that?

To the contrary, "thereof" means "religion," which is the word used in the Establishment Clause, not "a national religion." 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of "religion." It is "religion" which is not be established by law or Congress, not just a national religion. Any law respecting an establishment of "religion" is unconstitutional. President Madison's 1811 veto messages, of religion bills passed by Congress, and his c.1817 "Detached Memoranda," provide numerous specific examples as to applications of the Establishment Clause consistent with the understanding that, in America, an establishment of "religion" is not the business of Congress.
The Establishment Clause provides no exceptions.

The First Amendment commands "the free exercise" of religion. Government is the essence of coercion. In America religion is to be completely voluntary (the absence of government). That is much of about what America is. James Madison perfectly stated the constitutional principle established by the Constitution's religion commandments in Art. 6. and in the First Amendment: "separation between Religion and Government." Let's keep it that way.

Gene Garman, M.Div.
America's Real Religion
www.americasrealreligion.org <http://www.americasrealreligion.org> 







 


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