Missouri declares Christianity its official religion.

[Perry Dane]

	A not-very-analytic observation on a Friday afternoon:

	I happened to read these posts on the Missouri resolution at about 
the same time as I was taking a look at a remarkable document called 
the "Flushing Remonstrance," written in 1657, in which the leaders 
and citizens of Town of Flushing told Governor Stuyvesant of the 
then-Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (later, of course, New York) that 
they would not cooperate with his oppressive measures against the 
Quakers.  The document is often called the first formal statement of 
religious liberty in the American colonies, and some treat it as one 
of the direct precursors to the First Amendment.  Unsurprisingly, its 
argument for religious liberty is, in large measure, a religious argument.

	It strikes me, for what it's worth, that the Missouri resolution not 
only contradicts the Constitution (whether it "violates" it is a more 
complicated question having to do with the status of such legislative 
expressions of opinion), it also, in the saddest possible way, 
violates the "law of love, peace, and liberty" referred to in the 
Flushing Remonstrance.  Moreover, with all its talk of majority 
rights, the Missouri resolution is really more a statement of 
identity politics by an angry faction than a genuine defense of 
either religious values in general or even Christianity in particular.

	I am also reminded here of Bob Cover's discussion of 
"commitment."  The authors of the Flushing Remonstrance knew that 
Stuyvesant would end up arresting them, which he did.  I am not 
proposing, of course, that anyone actually test the mettle of the 
Missouri legislators by arresting them, but I wonder how many of them 
would have the courage of their convictions if that were the likely 
outcome of their little legal-literary exercise.

				Perry