http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/alba/071130
Friday, December 6, 2019
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Friday, November 29, 2019
Smithsonian Disrespects Christianity
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/smithsonian-christmas-season-exhibit-fea
Friday, November 1, 2019
Catholic Colleges May Be Threatened by Obama Administration
http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Details/mid/435/ItemID/847/Default.aspx
Obama Administration Threatens Independence of Catholic Colleges
In its latest threat to the religious liberty and independence of Catholic colleges and universities, the Obama administration has issued new regulations that open the door to possible state intrusion into curriculum, student policies and hiring decisions.
The regulations issued Friday effectively force many states to increase oversight of postsecondary education through state chartering or licensing, which is a necessary condition for colleges to participate in federal student aid programs.
Most Catholic colleges accept low-cost federal student loans and grants. If forced to forego federal aid, these colleges would be at a disadvantage in recruiting students.
“The door is opened for state politicians and bureaucrats who would impose their social agendas on private and religious colleges,” warned Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society.
“Already the Obama administration has seized direct ownership of student loans, and now a college’s eligibility for student loans is subject to the political whims of its state legislators and regulators. Many states have demonstrated callous disregard for the religious identity of Catholic colleges, from mandating contraceptive coverage in student and employee health plans to requiring employee benefits for same-sex couples.”
Although the Higher Education Act has long required state authorization for a college to participate in federal aid programs, many states do not aggressively monitor colleges and their consent was assumed unless otherwise reported to the U.S. Education Department. The new regulations require state approval of colleges “by name” and a state process “to review and appropriately act on” complaints about any approved institution.
When issuing the regulations Friday, the Education Department acknowledged that it had received complaints from college leaders that “a State’s role may extend into defining, for example, curriculum, teaching methods, subject matter content, faculty qualifications, and learning outcomes.” Others feared that states might “impose homogeneity upon institutions that would compromise their unique missions.”
In response, federal officials agreed that the new regulations do “not limit a State’s oversight of institutions.”
Last year, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruled that Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic institution in North Carolina, must cover birth control in its employee health insurance plan despite the college’s religious objections. An appeal to the EEOC is under review.
Catholic colleges and students may also not be protected from similar mandates for abortion and contraceptive insurance coverage under the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—i.e., President Obama’s health care overhaul.
After the EEOC ruling against Belmont Abbey College, The Cardinal Newman Society launched its project to defend the religious liberty of Catholic colleges through its division, The Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education. The Center published three papers—from experts in law, health insurance and ethics—to help Catholic colleges defend against government mandates for employee health benefits that violate Catholic morality.
Later this month, the Center will release a new legal analysis prepared by a prominent legal interest organization on steps Catholic colleges must take to defend themselves against increasing threats to their Catholic identity.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Articles to Check Out
Justice Scalia
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/scalia-on-faith-and-the-nation/
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Florida man fights to stop pre-game prayers at Pee Wee football league
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/florida-man-fights-to-stop-pre-game-prayers-at-pee-wee-football-league/
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
4 news items to harvest
http://www2.starexponent.com/news/2010/sep/25/perspective-should-christian-flag-fly-memorial-ar-524154/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-09-24-bragg23_ST_N.htm
http://sentinelsource.com/articles/2010/09/25/features/religion/free/id_413283.txt
http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/2010/09/24/20100924litchfield-park-moment-silence-council-meetings.html
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100925/NEWS04/9250301/-1/NEWSMAP
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/pdf/SOFA.Sept.2010data.pdf
Sunday, September 22, 2019
NPS Tour Guides Misrepresent Founders' Religious Faith
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=204965
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Patriotism, Not OK; Homosexuality, OK
(Same viewpoint discrimination that Christians run into)
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Business/Default.aspx?id=1117844
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Founders Take on First Amendment
Find pieces to use:
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8312&Itemid=48
The cry, "That violates the separation of church and state!" has been the centerpiece of the secularist drive to marginalize Christianity in the public sphere since the 1940s. The real -- and often neglected -- question is what precisely that separation means and how it should be interpreted and applied.
The secularists' interpretation of the establishment clause -- the line of the First Amendment that reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" -- ultimately rests upon anti-Christian prejudice and involves cherry picking from certain founders' writings. In recent years, we have seen groups such as the ACLU, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State; Web sites such as Infidels.org; and leftist publications such as the Nation come out of the woodwork with attempts to refute the notion that America was ever a Christian nation. Instead, they recast the founders as anti-clericalists in the mold of the French revolutionaries.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Like all historical documents, the Bill of Rights must be read within the context of what its framers meant when they penned the establishment clause. To get inside the minds of the authors, we must first recall the period in which they wrote.
Following Queen Elizabeth I's reestablishment of the Anglican Church in 1560, Parliament and the queen were made the ultimate source of religious dogma in England. Where the Roman Catholic clergy and bishops had previously decided matters of religion, secular leaders of the House of Commons and House of Lords mandated by law which articles of faith were to be believed by the queen's subjects and which were to be considered illegal.
As a result, Catholics and non-conforming Protestants suffered tremendous persecutions in England because of their refusal to submit to the Anglican church. This state of affairs continued throughout the colonial period and into the Americas, where each colony -- except Pennsylvania and New York -- had its own state church.
This was a problem the Founding Fathers knew they had to change, and so they made it impossible for the new government to decide matters of religious dogma by prohibiting the creation of a state religion.
Thomas Jefferson was keenly aware of this when he wrote his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists stating that the establishment clause erected a "wall of separation" between church and state -- a point made clear by the next sentence in the original draft: "Congress thus [is] inhibited from passing acts respecting religion."
The argument for the political separation of church and state in the First Amendment must then be understood within the historical context of the struggles between Catholics and Protestants, especially as regards the English origins of what ultimately became the United States of America.
Jefferson on Christianity in Government
Even Jefferson, arguably the founder most opposed to traditional Christian dogmas such as the Incarnation and Trinity, did not in practice oppose Christianity's ceremonial role in government or its influence upon national morality, as evidenced by some of his actions during his presidency.
During his term, for example, the halls of Congress were routinely used for religious services presided over by clergy from the Washington, D.C., region.
Anson Phelps Stokes, a mid-20th century Yale historian, relates in his book Church and State in the United States:
[T]he preaching services were established early in the Jefferson administration (1801-1809), and the seats were always kept for the president and his secretary, the former attending regularly.... The services were so popular that the floor of the House proved inadequate, and the platform behind the speaker's chair and every other spot was filled....
Contrary to secular myth, Jefferson's writings show that Christianity played a strong role in his moral thinking. Like the Christian clergy, he was a moral absolutist who would have been shocked by the Democratic Party's present support for moral nihilism. "It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately," Jefferson wrote in an 1816 letter to George Logan.
In fact, contrary to the claims of atheists who call Jefferson to their cause, the founder explicitly described himself as a Christian in an 1803 letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, where he wrote, "To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other."
The founder, unlike radicals such as Thomas Paine or Ethan Allen, saw religion as useful in preserving society's moral compass. Jefferson placed preachers and moralists on the same footing with legislators as guarantors of social morality. He wrote the following in an 1814 letter to Thomas Law:
When [the moral sense] is wanting, we endeavor to supply the defect by education, by appeals to reason and calculation, by presenting to the being so unhappily conformed, other motives to do good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or the rejection of those among whom he lives, and whose society is necessary to his happiness and even existence…. These are the correctives which are supplied by education, and which exercise the functions of the moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and they lead into a course of correct action all those whose depravity is not too profound to be eradicated.
Jefferson would have likely been appalled by modern liberals' efforts to assert that the First Amendment's establishment clause was intended to apply to matters of societal morality, rather than core matters of religious dogma, such as the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, or the creation of a Church of the United States of America.
To this end, Jefferson wrote in an 1809 letter to a James Fishback:
Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.
[[ ALREADY USED this next one:
"My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ." - Letter to Thomas Leiper, January 11, 1809
]]]
Thus, Jefferson was opposed to legislating theological matters, not the promotion or defense of religiously motivated moral principles.
The Christian Origins of the Establishment Clause
In European countries where churches were subject to state control, churchmen became little more than religiously oriented bureaucrats whose Christianity was as deep as the clothes they wore on Sunday mornings.
The established churches in the American colonies were no exception, and dissatisfaction over their "spiritual dryness" led to the movement known as the Great Awakening in the mid-18th century.
Many scholars and politicians caught in the contemporary fight over church and state separation tend to emphasize the deism and anti-Christian currents of the Enlightenment. At the same time, they ignore the impact of this first Great Awakening during the 1740s and 1750s upon American religious and cultural life, which Princeton University scholar Frank Lambert attributes, in part, to the post-revolutionary attitudes in some circles about the institutional connection between the churches and the states.
Additionally, this post-Great Awakening movement was keenly aware of how the institutional dependence of churches upon the state was often detrimental to the quality of the faith expressed in those churches. Thus, they reasoned that the only way to have an authentically pure form of Christianity was to divorce ecclesiastical institutions from their dependence upon the state.
This period led many colonists -- especially those in Virginia's remote western frontier -- to defy civil and ecclesiastical authority to preach the message of the "New Birth" without regard to existing institutions and laws. As a result, followers of this movement rejected preachers in the established churches whom they considered unconverted, causing a backlash among those established churches against the new evangelicals.
Coincidentally, both Jefferson and James Madison, hailing from Virginia's mountain country, came of age amid the Great Awakening struggles between the Protestant non-conformists and the Anglican Church in Virginia. Not surprisingly, this served as the backdrop for their arguments against the formal establishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia and ultimately their case against religious establishments after the ratification of the Constitution.
This is demonstrated by Jefferson's 1779 Notes on the State of Virginia, where the founder points out that nearly two-thirds of Virginians belonged to sects arising out of the Great Awakening rather than the established Anglican Church. These Virginians faced serious legal impediments to practicing their faith, and considering that Jefferson came from Charlottesville, in the Virginia mountains, his neighbors' religious difficulties could not but have affected his thinking on established religion and religious freedom.
Lambert argues that the evangelicals agreed with the establishment churches about the importance of religion in society; nevertheless, "they argued that true Christianity was voluntary, not coercive, and, therefore, society was best served through free and independent churches preaching the gospel."
Madison's 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance, often cited by atheists who try to portray the founder as anti-Christian or as a believer that Christians were bigoted or ignorant because of its explicit usage of those epithets, is actually rooted in this Great Awakening tradition. Madison's target, however, was not Christianity, but rather the corrupting influence of the state upon the church.
To this end, Madison wrote regarding the English-style institutional domination of the church:
[T]he establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws.... Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author; and to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.
7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation...the Bill [the proposed legal establishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia] is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions.
Despite the claims that Memorial and Remonstrance proves Madison's irreligiosity, it clearly shows that Madison was indeed a Christian who saw the institutional establishment of a state church as an obstacle to authentic Christianity. (It is unlikely an atheist would refer to non-Christian religions as "false.")
Debating the Establishment Clause
While Americans came to oppose what they saw as a "tyrannical" Christianity of the governmentally controlled variety, they supported Christianity's place in the free market of ideas. These undercurrents found a clear voice in the debates over the First Amendment in 1789.
The deliberations show that the first Congress's intent differed sharply from that of the French revolutionaries who sought to destroy Christianity as a force in society. As 19th-century Union Theological Seminary historian Philip Schaff observed, "The American separation of church and state rests upon respect for the church; the infidel [European anticlerical] separation, on indifference and hatred of the church, and of religion itself…. The constitution did not create a nation, nor its religion and institutions. It found them already existing, and was framed for the purpose of protecting them under a republican form of government, in a rule of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Legal scholars, such as LSU law professor John Baker, argue that the founders and most educated Americans living during the 18th century understood that a religious establishment was an institutional church under the control of the state, and to which all citizens would be expected to belong. An August 15, 1789, entry in Madison's papers indicates he intended for the establishment clause to prevent Congress from mandating that very thing -- it was not a wholesale ban on Christianity's influence on the nation's public morality or laws.
The entry says: "Mr. Madison said he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law [as had been the practice in many of the colonies], nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience...."
Many on the Left make much out of the fact that Madison's proposed language -- that Congress should make no law regarding the establishment of a "national religion" -- was rejected by the House, in favor of the more general "religion." But their point ignores the historical context for removing the word "national" from the establishment clause. The rejection was rooted in the arguments between the Federalist and anti-Federalist forces, not because they wanted to prevent the government from allowing religious expression in a more general manner. During the debate, Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts took issue with Madison's language regarding whether the government was a national or federal government (in which the states retained their individual sovereignty). The question compelled Madison to withdraw his language from the debate.
Legal scholars, including Baker, argue that using the term "national government" was unconscionable for both Federalist and anti-Federalist forces. Thus, removing the word "national" from the establishment clause was necessary to secure ratification by the states, many of which were wary of having their authority undercut by the federal government.
Following the argument between Madison and Gerry, Rep. Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire proposed language that would have said, "Congress shall make no laws touching religion or the rights of conscience," which raised uproar from members, such as Rep. Benjamin Huntingdon of Connecticut and Rep. Peter Sylvester of New York. They worried the language could be used to harm religious practice because federal courts might construe the establishment clause in a manner different from Madison's intent. Almost 220 years later, those objections have proven prophetic.
Others, such as Rep. Roger Sherman of Connecticut, believed the clause was unnecessary because the original Constitution only gave Congress stated powers, which Sherman believed made it impossible for Congress to establish a national religion (since doing so was not among its stated powers).
Anti-Federalists such as Rep. Thomas Tucker of South Carolina moved to strike the establishment clause completely because it could preempt the religious clauses in the state constitutions, but the anti-Federalists were unsuccessful in persuading the House of Representatives to drop it from the amendment.
The Senate went through several more narrowly targeted versions before reaching the contemporary language.
One version read, "Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others, nor shall freedom of conscience be infringed," while another read, "Congress shall make no law establishing one particular religious denomination in preference to others." Ultimately, the Senate rejected the more narrowly targeted language.
The establishment clause did not nullify the religious establishments in states such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, nor did it abolish elements of the common law that were connected with Christian belief. Although religious groups were institutionally separate from the state, religion continued to have an impact upon all three branches of government.
In fact, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania acknowledged this in the 1822 case of Updegraph v. the Commonwealth: "The constitution of the United States has made no alteration, nor in the great body of the laws which was an incorporation of the common law doctrine of Christianity, as suited to the condition of the colony, and without which no free government can long exist…. If Christianity was abolished, all false oaths, all tests by oath in the common form by the book, would cease to be indictable as perjury."
Despite the passage of the establishment clause in 1789, Congress did not stop itself from issuing a proclamation of thanksgiving to God just two months later. Clearly, they saw no contradiction.
Secularists often point to the fact that the Senate ratified a treaty in 1797 with Tripoli, in which the eleventh article states, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
This statement, however, should be understood within the context of the founders' repudiation of the divine right of kings, which claimed the monarch's power came from God alone and thus the king was also the head of the church. It was also intended to assert that the United States government -- unlike the Christian kings of Europe -- was a civil government that didn't seek to use force to compel the Muslim rulers of North Africa to convert to Christianity, hence the clause, "No pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
Finally, the founders, according to Lambert, didn't equate the government with the nation, which they clearly associated with the people. The founders established a civil government, based upon civil laws, some of which were influenced by Christian principles and morality.
The Establishment Clause and Public Morality
This knowledge was commonplace throughout the 19th century, and courts frequently gave Christian morality a privileged place when deciding family law cases. Christian principles were invoked time and again by the Supreme Court as the reason polygamy should remain illegal in the United States. In its 1890 case of The Mormon Church v. The United States, the Court wrote in its majority opinion, "The organization of our community for the spread and practice of polygamy is, in a measure, a return to barbarism. It is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization, which Christianity has produced in the Western world. The question, therefore, is whether the promotion of such a nefarious system and practice, so repugnant to our laws and to our [Christian] civilization is to be allowed to continue by the sanction of
our government."
Similar points were made in the 1890 Davis v. Beeson case where the court said outlawing bigamy and polygamy was constitutional because they were "crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian nations." Consequently, polygamy was not outlawed because of secular concerns over how polygamy would adversely affect children but only because they were offensive to Christianity.
In practice, the founders' intent to keep government away from mandating popular adherence on matters of theology did not extend to the expression of Christian sentiments by public officials, nor through statutes aimed at preserving public morality. The 1890s polygamy cases should be considered precedent for our current debates over "gay rights," abortion, euthanasia, etc., because the court acknowledged that Christian morality was part of our common law. (And, of course, those cases have never been overturned.)
Our founders never mandated a complete exclusion of Christianity from the public square because they wanted to foster a marketplace of ideas wherein Christianity would remain vibrant. In contrast, secularists try to undermine that same marketplace and reduce traditional Christians to the status of second-class citizens. But they should tread lightly here. The 1965 Supreme Court decision United States v. Seeger shows that belief in a deity is not essential for a system of beliefs to be considered a religion within our legal
system. From that standpoint, the degree of devotion homosexual-rights advocates or feminists give their own ideologies could actually be considered a form of religion.
The irony is rich.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
More to Use
http://www.seekfind.net/SamuelAdams.html
http://www.christianactivities.com/bytheway/story.asp?ID=1765
"The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally - I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally - impossible for us to figure to ourselves what life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"[The words 'under God'] will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded." -- Dwight Eisenhower
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Federer Book Quotes
http://books.google.com/books?id=obrbSGdmiaQC&pg=PA21&dq=Attorney+General%27s+Conference+in+1950+truman+%22The+fundamental+basis+of+this+nation%27s+laws+was+given+to+Moses+on+the+Mount.%22&ei=u_ybS7KZN5bONM-vwdcH&cd=2#v=onepage&q=Attorney%20General%27s%20Conference%20in%201950%20truman%20%22The%20fundamental%20basis%20of%20this%20nation%27s%20laws%20was%20given%20to%20Moses%20on%20the%20Mount.%22&f=false
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Lots of Jefferson Religion Quotes (U of VA)
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1650.htm
DELETE PARAGRAPHS AS THEY ARE USED:
"Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:283
"One of the amendments to the Constitution... expressly declares that '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,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:382
"The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and... if any act shall be... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. (*) ME 2:303, Papers 2:546
The Private Nature of Religion
"I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests." --Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith, 1816. ME 15:60
"From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:545
"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
"Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine." --Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:198
Government Intermeddling in Religion
"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME 3:378
"Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the consciences of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to New London Methodists, 1809. ME 16:332
"I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429
"To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2: 546
"It is... proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe, a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant, too, that this recommendation is to carry some authority and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription, perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed?... Civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:428
Religion Intermeddling in Government
"Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
"Ministers of the Gospel are excluded [from serving as Visitors of the county Elementary Schools] to avoid jealousy from the other sects, were the public education committed to the ministers of a particular one; and with more reason than in the case of their exclusion from the legislative and executive functions." --Thomas Jefferson: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:419
"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:425
"I do not know that it is a duty to disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other countries, who may think themselves bound to extinguish by fire and fagot the heresies to which we give the name of conversions, and quote our own example for it. Were the Pope, or his holy allies, to send in mission to us some thousands of Jesuit priests to convert us to their orthodoxy, I suspect that we should deem and treat it as a national aggression on our peace and faith." --Thomas Jefferson to Michael Megear, 1823. ME 15:434
Establishments of Religion Undermine Rights
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind." --Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson, 1801. ME 10:237
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1810. ME 12:345
"[If] the nature of... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierrepont Edwards, July 1801. (*)
"This doctrine ['that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are we must tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our fathers'] is the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of which finding themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power, and fear every change as endangering the comforts they now hold." --Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818.
"I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
"The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy]." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
"The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
"Believing... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:281
"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
"I have been just reading the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words: 'The Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.' Now I wish this presented to those who question what [a bookseller] may sell or we may buy, with a request to strike out the words, 'Roman Catholic,' and to insert the denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, and be taken, like the Spanish religion, under the 'protection of wise and just laws.' It would show to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:128
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers 2:545
The Benefits of Religious Freedom
"The law for religious freedom... [has] put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:400
"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67
"No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor... otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and... the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546
"Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:545
"We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:546
"The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:546
"A recollection of our former vassalage in religion and civil government will unite the zeal of every heart, and the energy of every hand, to preserve that independence in both which, under the favor of Heaven, a disinterested devotion to the public cause first achieved, and a disinterested sacrifice of private interests will now maintain." --Thomas Jefferson to Baltimore Baptists, 1808. ME 16:318
Religious Illegality
"The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
"If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:224
"If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:548
"It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546
"Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore, prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a private house to murder a child; it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children. It is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs; they may, therefore, be religiously sacrificed. But if the good of the State required a temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during a siege, sacrifices of them may then be rightfully suspended also. This is the true extent of toleration." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:547
Thursday, January 17, 2019
More resources
http://www.whateveristrue.com/heritage/
Story Commentaries
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions69.html
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