The First Amendment, Part One

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Central to the principals of American Freedom is allegiance to the Constitution. Our elected officials must, to assume office, fulfill a requirement to swear an oath to defend and support the Constitution. Our trust as a nation is placed in the word of law and not the word of a leader. Even the military, under direct orders from the President, have sworn to defend the Constitution as their primary mission and to obey the orders of the President only if his orders do not conflict with that.

The founding fathers added the amendments in order of their importance to the cause of liberty. Therefore, the first amendment must possess the highest degree of importance for the well being of the Republic. This amendment covers a wide area of freedoms that had historically been denied to the common citizen and governmental retribution for the infraction of laws surrounding religion, speech and free assembly had been traditionally, swift and brutal. It was critical to secure the high ideals that this new nation was to represent, that these rights were guarded as aggressively as they had previously been denied. Given the importance of this amendment, we will address each of the clauses individually over the next three days.

The most misunderstood of these principals is the first. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The modern incarnation of this passage is the separation of Church and State. The men who founded our nation were statesmen, lawyers, businessmen, land owners and tradesmen. They were also openly religious and sought to secure the blessings of God on this nation by recognizing His divine word that man was and ought to be, free.

Many of the early settlers to this new continent came here to seek the freedom of religious expression; a freedom denied to them by the Church of England. The founding fathers celebrated their beliefs openly but recognized that belief assumes many forms. That all men should have the comfort of worshiping in the faith of their choice, free from coercion, free from ridicule and free from reprisal. To that end, they established language in the form of a Constitutional Amendment that would prohibit the United States from establishing a “State Religion” similar to the Church of England.

That was meant to allow all citizens to worship in their own way. Unfortunately, modern man brings modern thought into the discussion. Public schools once began each day with a prayer. Atheists saw this as the establishment of religion and bombarded the courts with suits claiming that the freedom of religion, or non-religion, was being trampled on by this practice. Reading the letter of the law, the courts had no alternative but to agree and remove the mandates of prayer from public schools. However, the courts, as usual, went too far and the separation of “Church and State” slowly became the separation of “Church from State”, prohibiting any public display of religion. In essence, it has been mutated to say “freedom from religion” instead of the word of law which is “freedom of religion”.

Remember that the intention was to allow the free worship of God, each in his own way. Now we have adopted a policy where school children that choose to pray are prohibited from doing so in public places. That any public display that acknowledges the faith of the American people is abolished and that public monies can not be used to assist charities and community organizations that are operated by religious organizations. This was never the intent of the First Amendment. I do not believe that the government should endorse one religion over another but it has the obligation to recognize the faith of all of its citizens. It should not lead a school in prayer but neither should it prevent those that wish to pray from doing so. It should not celebrate one religious event over another but it should celebrate the freedom with which American’s celebrate these events for themselves.

I could go to the extreme and point out that by the definition posted in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary that progressivism meets three of the four definitions given to describe religion and is therefore logically, a religion itself. While progressivism is primarily a political frame of mind the believers in this ideology also eagerly point out the morality of the goals in their political aims. It is dangerous for one to assume that their morality is superior to all others, just as it is dangerous to claim that one religion is superior over another.

Following the logic of the modern Supreme Court and all of the opponents of public displays of religion I would submit that the endorsement and display of progressive ideology be equally expunged from all public venues. That the Congressional Progressive Caucus should be disbanded and a full accounting of the public funds used to support it be made known to the American people and that progressive organizations should also be prohibited from receiving public funding.

We can go down the list of the groups and ideologies, both left and right, that have had a strangle hold on the governmental process and apply this equally among them. In the end, once we weed out the political groups that pursue their aims with “religious” fervor, we will eventually end up with public support for only a small group of individuals that look very much like the men that founded this country; those that would seek justice for all and posses a keen recognition of individual liberties and freedoms.

Hmmm….Sounds like a great idea! Let’s found a nation based on those principals!

Tomorrow: Part two of the First Amendment. Freedom speech and freedom of the press.”

Paul

It's beginning to look a lot like a secular winter holiday season.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas; everywhere you go….that is, unless that everywhere is public school where it’s beginning to look like a random winter festival devoid of any meaning. Every December we are cursed with another flurry of moronic edicts from school districts to prove that once again, the anti-religious groups, the ACLU and the courts have little or no understanding of the Constitution.

Our nation was founded on the principal of the free and unfettered worship of God. The Constitutional separation of Church and State was designed to prevent the government from adopting a State religion to the exclusion of all others and was meant to be a guarantee that all people could worship in the religion of their choice without interference. What we have today is a defective interpretation of the First Amendment that has transmuted the Separation of Church and State into the Separation of Church from State resulting in State suppression of religious freedom.

During the adoption of the Constitution some were afraid that the First Amendment Separation of Church and State as written might be misconstrued in exactly this way. August 15, 1789. Peter Sylvester of New York had his doubts...He feared the First Amendment might be thought to have a tendency to abolish religion altogether. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts said it would read better if it was that "no religious doctrine shall be established by law." James Madison of Virginia said he understood the meaning of the words to be, that "Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law."

The founding fathers were overtly religious and recognized the importance of religion in a truly free society. Moral convictions could allow America to enjoy unparalleled freedoms without descending into anarchy or without the need for draconian rule to maintain order. It was really the spread of Marxist ideology that sewed the seeds of religious oppression. After all, European monarchs all claimed to have derived their power directly from God so if those governments were to fall in favor of Socialist or Communist rule, then God would necessarily have to fall as well. Lenin described religion as “the opiate of the masses” in that religious doctrine placated the general population and kept them from seizing control of their own destiny.

Communism required loyal followers and the ruling party had no intention of sharing that loyalty with an unseen God. Later, the Socialist assault on God became part of their doctrine of demoralization. As long as man would fight for “God and Country”, the prospects for Communist victory remained elusive. Soviet influences began to chip away at the fabric of the American faith structure. The “useful idiots” as Lenin called them, began the process of using our laws against us and once the courts had a sufficient number of progressive, activist judges in place; the legal battles that would redefine the First Amendment began to yield results.

Atheists such as Madalyn Murray O'Hair led the charge in the United States. After receiving a Bachelors Degree from Ashland University, O’Hair attended law school at the South Texas College of Law. She completed her law degree in 1952 but failed the bar exam and subsequently, never practiced law. She is reported to have attended meetings of the Socialist Workers Party while living in Baltimore in 1957. In 1959, O’Hair applied for Soviet Citizenship and after receiving no reply, traveled to Europe by ship with her children with the intention of defecting through the Soviet Embassy in Paris. To her surprise, the Soviet Embassy denied her entry. Soviet Communists may have been Godless thugs, but even they recognized a screw-ball when they saw one. In the end, O’Hair would return to the United States to embrace her new calling of disrupting the American way of life.

In 1960, O’Hair filed a law suit against the Baltimore School District on behalf of her son, William O’Hair claiming that he was forced to participate in religious exercises and that teachers at the school ridiculed William for resisting. The law suit was consolidated with a similar action (Abington School District vs. Schempp) and invariably led to a Supreme Court decision that proclaimed that school prayer and the reading of religious materials in public schools were unconstitutional under the First Amendment separation of Church and State and that all such practices should be banned from public schools.

In 1963, Madalyn Murray O’Hair founded the American Atheists, a group dedicated to Atheist ideals (or lack of ideals) and began a systematic assault on religious freedom through the American courts. Curiously, her son William was baptized at a Baptist Church in 1980 and took up work as a preacher. This enraged Madalyn which led to a permanent estrangement between William and his mother. Commenting on her son’s religious awakening she said “One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times...he is beyond human forgiveness."

That tells me O’Hair’s 1960 law suit actually had little to do with her son and everything to do with her own twisted views on religion and politics. Madalyn O’Hair also claimed to be a “sexual libertarian”; openly stating her beliefs that children in sixth grade should be given sexual education and that people should be allowed to engage in sexual intercourse as soon as nature intended and not according to the age restraints of existing law.

O’Hair remained at the helm of the American Atheists until her death in 1995 at age 76. Curiously, Madalyn O’Hair, her son Jon and her granddaughter Robin were kidnapped, murdered and dismembered by an employee of the American Atheist group she had founded. Some claimed that she received her just due and this was God’s retribution for a lifetime of work against religion. I don’t believe in a vengeful God. I believe that God has given us free will and that we follow because our faith compels us to do so and not because of the threat of divine vengeance. No, Madalyn and her family did not die because of an angry God; they died because she had surrounded herself with people as devoid of moral constraints as she was. After all, murder may be against the law but the only thing that makes it morally reprehensible is faith in the word of God and belief in the divinity of the Ten Commandments.

The most fitting eulogy for Madalyn Murray O’Hair was delivered by her son William, the Baptist Preacher. He said "My mother was an evil person... Not for removing prayer from America's schools... No, she was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents' inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company....Regardless of how evil and lawless my mother was she did not deserve to die in the manner she did."

I am sure it pained him to have to say that about his mother and as a preacher, I am sure he spent many hours on his knees praying for her salvation because that is what the faithful do. In the end, it is only Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s legacy that lives on. The landmark lawsuit she brought had lasting implications and has been the basis for many subsequent law suits against any public display of religion in America. Today, schools have gone as far as banning music for their “winter festivals” that have any religious connotations, even if it is just played as an instrumental piece.

Anyone with children in public school is familiar with school fund raising events, one of which is (or was) the Christmas sale. The Christmas sale displays items donated by parents and then allows the children to buy those odds and ends for their parent’s Christmas gifts. Not only is the name of “Christmas” barred from the event but one school district in New Jersey has gone as far as sending a list home to the parents to tell them what is and is not acceptable. Items with a religious theme are banned and they have even prohibited red and green tissue paper because some modern day Madalyn O’Hair might make the connection between those colors and the observance of Christmas.

It is time we ask for an honest interpretation of the First Amendment based on the known intent of the crafters of our Constitution and not some lawyer’s twisting of the English language. Our First Amendment right to embrace our beliefs openly and without harassment has been diluted and it is now the religious equivalent of “don’t ask-don’t tell”. So you tell me….what is more dangerous; religious displays or Atheism? I would ask Madalyn O’Hair but she was murdered by a fellow Atheist.

Paul