What Happened To Separation of Church and State?

Sniktch · Dec 15, 2002

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Big B: The slippery slope here is if this is passed without resistance, then the next step cannot be reasonably resisted. If this is legal, providing a "minor" penalty for non-compliance cannot be illegal. The process then can freely escalate to the point of:

:click: *masked soldier points .45 at back of atheist's head* "Pray or die."

Opposition to this "proposal" is not based on this proposal causing direct harm, it is based on later proposals, using this one as a precedent, causing direct harm.

[ December 15, 2002, 02:06: Message edited by: Sniktch ]

Laches · Dec 15, 2002

The clause was inserted for one reason: to avoid having a national religion.
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Shralp, I missed your reply a long time ago but I think that this is absolutely wrong. A lot of this comes from the constitutional scholar Levy and other parts from Tom Peters:

If, as accomodationists want to argue, the purpose of the First Amendment was simply to bar the establishment of a state church, then one would expect to see evidence of this intent in the framing of the Amendment. In fact, the framers rejected versions of the First Amendment that would have done nothing more than bar the establishment of a state church. Rather, the framers adopted what is arguably the broadest of the proposed versions.

James Madison introduced the first version of the Amendment in the House of Representatives in 1789. The version read as follows: "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on the account of religious belief, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience in any manner or on any pretext be infringed." A House subcommittee immediately edited out the word "national" from Madison's proposal. A variety of additional versions were proposed and debated; none of these versions contained the word "national," or can be construed to bar only the establishment of a national religion. After further debate, the House approved the following, clearly broader, amendment: "Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience." The first two thirds of the proposal are similar to our present version of the First Amendment; nothing in the proposal seems independently to authorize Congress to aid religion in any way.

The House amendment went to the Senate in August. On September 3 the Senate took up three alternatives to the House language. The wording of these versions were as follows:

Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others.

Congress shall not make any law infringing the rights of conscience, or establishing any religious sect or society.

Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another.
None of these versions passed muster. Instead, the Senate approved the following, much broader, language: "Congress shall make no law establishing religion." Six days later the Senate returned to the Amendment for the final time and approved the following: "Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion." The Senate, in other words, rejected three versions of the First Amendment that would have codified the accomodationist position (i.e., the barring of a national church, and little else) in favor of a version that, while not as broad as the House proposal, was no longer narrowly focused on the establishment of a "sect," "society," or "denomination."

Given the approval of different versions of the Bill of Rights by the House and Senate, a conference committee was created to resolve differences. The House members of the committee (headed by Madison) flatly refused to accept the Senate version of the religion Amendment, thereby "indicating that the House would not be satisfied with merely a ban on preference of one sect or religion over others" (Levy, "The Original Meaning of the Establishment Clause," p. 60). The Senate conferees then abandoned the Senate proposal, and the current version of the Amendment was adopted.

The history of the framing of the First Amendment, in other words, gives little support to the accomodationist position. The House never considered a version of the Amendment that codified the accomodationist position. The Senate did consider such versions, but rejected them. In their place, the Senate approved a more broadly drawn Amendment that barred the establishment of articles of faith and modes of worship without reference to religious denominations. The final version of the Amendment was even more broadly drawn than the House version in that it barred not only an establishment of religion, but even laws respecting the establishment of religion (i.e., wording that further guaranteed that the federal government could not interfere with the religious affairs of the states). Clearly, Congress intended the First Amendment to do more than simply bar the establishment of a state church.
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Through the 14th Amendment it applies to states, yada, yada, yada.

The point is, the original intent was for the wall to be much, much higher than you suggest.

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What Happened To Separation of Church and State?

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What Happened To Separation of Church and State?

Sniktch Gems: 1/31Latest gem: Turquoise

Laches Gems: 19/31Latest gem: Aquamarine

Sniktch Gems: 1/31
Latest gem: Turquoise

Laches Gems: 19/31
Latest gem: Aquamarine