Have we totally missed the intent of the 1st ammendment?

Question

I love how everyone interprets the 1st amendment to imply a rigid seperation of church and state. Jefferson may have favored this but the actual constitutional compromise is much more brilliant. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"
This really states that congress may not single out anything that is unique to religion.

"respecting" means referring to or about.... as in "with respect to". Its the legal term.

An establishment of religion does not mean establishing a state religion. rather this means any of the things that are solely relious in nature. "Prayer", "Churches", "Sabath", "Tything", "Crucifix" are all establishments of religion and congress is not even allowed to mention them in a law.

This means that congress can't single one out over another cause they can't mention them. They can't touch a religion cause they can't even mention it.

There are 4 other garrantees in the 1st ammendment, where are we at on those?

Congress can't ban or require prayer in school cause they can't mention it. Congress can't prohibit or require the 10 commandments to be displayed because they can't mention them. It should force all laws to be generic in nature and apply equally to secular and non secular establishments.

Answer 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free practice thereof.

This means that Congress cannot touch religion at all. Anything that involves religion, is simply off limits for congressional regulation. No law can promote or restrict religion in any way at all. Which means that religion can flourish or fail on its own without any federal interference.

There is a second part of this, "nor prohibit the free practice thereof." Anything that restricts any individual's right to practice his or her religious beliefs, no matter what faith or lack thereof he chooses, is absolutely unconstitutional. As long as one's religious practices do not interfere with the rights of others, people are free to express their beliefs anyway, anywhere, anytime, they see fit. This includes, teachers, politicians, school children, everyone. Be it in their home, church, school, or the halls of Congress. Whether or not one person finds another's beliefs offensive is not justification to silence them. Nowhere in the constitution is there any guarantee of a right to not be offended. It has often been pointed out that the freedom of speech protects offensive speech.

I've often wondered what is so threatening about an image of the Ten Commandments adorning a courthouse. Their mere presence does not make them binding law, they are decoration. If religious symbols is so offensive, why not protest the statue of the goddess Justice that adorns their roofs. You don't see Christians getting incensed about that, despite the fact that those same Ten Commandments clearly say not to worship graven images.

The other rights protected by the first ammendment, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of press, all have had limits placed upon them but none of them are as explicitly forbidden subjects as religion. But basically you have these rights as long as you are not using them to cause harm. You can be as offensive as you want but you cannot deliberately incite violence and any assemblies must be peaceable. These are fairly reasonable restrictions.

On the issue of religion, the Government must be hands off.

Answer 2

It just means that anbody can practice any or no religion as they choose. It also means the government can't regulate religion and religion can not regulate the government. It's quite simple and Thomas Jefferson coined separation of Church and State because that's exactly what they meant when they wrote in the constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" He was paraphrasing and he did a great job.

Answer 3

your statement "An establishment of religion does not mean establishing a state religion" is false in the original 18th century context.

Back then, 'establishment' did mean 'establishing a state religion'. Some of the things you go on to mention are artifacts of one particular religion and thus Congress can make no laws about them for that reason.

However, a more general law, for example one requiring all places of business to be closed for one consecutive 24 hour period of their choice each week, might well pass Constitutional muster. There is nothing in that which says why such a period is to be observed, nor choosing one such period over another.


:-)

Answer 4

Think about the times. The people wanted to be able to worship whatever they wanted, and not just the Church of England. So this was included in the Constitution to assure that you could worship (or not) whatever you wanted and the government would not be involved.

Now we are seeing how important this amendment is. With Christianity being the major religion in the U.S, it could easily be seen as the state religion if the government allowed it to happen. But our country is made up of many people with many religions. All should be considered equal to the other, and any move to say our country is based on Christianity is in complete disagreement with the Constitution.

The Constitution is about letting people decide for themselves what their religious beliefs will be, and not have it forced upon them.

Answer 5

You are right. Most of our Nation's symbols have scripture on them.

Thank God for the new Supreme Court Justices. We can only hope that with time, we'll bring our country back to its intended roots.