Blog against Theocracy II: the glorious first

For First Freedom First - Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, Talk2Action, and Blogs against Theocracy present a Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

The first amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights:

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.

The subject had been on many people's minds for a long time before the Constitution was written.

In 1644, Roger Williams, that fervent Puritan, wrote "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution", which contained these points:

Eighthly, God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.

Ninthly, in holding an enforced uniformity of religion in a civil state, we must necessarily disclaim our desires and hopes of the Jew's conversion to Christ.

Tenthly, an enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

Eleventhly, the permission of other consciences and worships than a state professeth only can (according to God) procure a firm and lasting peace (good assurance being taken according to the wisdom of the civil state for uniformity of civil obedience from all sorts).

Twelfthly, lastly, true civility and Christianity may both flourish in a state or kingdom, notwithstanding the permission of divers and contrary consciences, either of Jew or Gentile.

In 1663 the Plantations of Rhode Island and Providence were chartered, and that charter contained this most remarkable provision:

and because some of the people and inhabitants of the same colonie cannot, in theire private opinions, conforme to the publique exercise of religion, according to the litturgy, formes and ceremonyes of the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oaths and articles made and established in that behalfe; and for that the same, by reason of the remote distances of those places, will (as wee hope) bee noe breach of the unitie and unifformitie established in this nation: Have therefore thought ffit, and doe hereby publish, graunt, ordeyne and declare, That our royall will and pleasure is, that noe person within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall bee any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinione in matters of religion, and doe not actually disturb the civill peace of our sayd colony; but that all and everye person and persons may, from tyme to tyme, and at all tymes hereafter, freelye and fullye have and enjoye his and theire owne judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, throughout the tract of lande hereafter mentioned; they behaving themselves peaceablie and quietlie, and not useing this libertie to lycentiousnesse and profanenesse, nor to the civill injurye or outward disturbeance of others; any lawe, statute, or clause, therein contayned, or to bee contayned, usage or custome of this realme, to the contrary hereof, in any wise, notwithstanding.

In 1670 William Penn wrote The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience in reponse to an Act against Dissenters, which includes these points:

we singly state the question thus;

Whether imposition, restraint, and persecution, upon persons for exercising such a liberty of conscience as is before expressed, and so circumstantiated, be not to impeach the honour of God, the meekness of the Christian religion, the authority of Scripture, the privilege of nature, the principles of common reason, the well-being of government, and apprehensions of the greatest personages of former and latter ages?

First, Then we say, that Imposition, Restraint, and Persecution, for matters relating to conscience, directly invade the divine prerogative, and divest the Almighty of a due, proper to none besides himself. And this we prove by these five particulars:

...Thirdly, It enthrones Man as king over conscience, the alone just claim and privilege of his Creator; whose thoughts are not as mens thoughts, but has reserved to himself that empire from all the Caesars on earth: For if men, in reference to souls and bodies, things appertaining to this and the other world, shall be subject to their fellow-creatures, what follows, but that Caesar (however he got it) has all, God’s share, and his own too? And being Lord of both, both are Caesar's, and not God's.

Fourthly, It defeats God’s work of Grace, and the invisible operation of his eternal Spirit, (which can alone beget faith, and is only to be obeyed, in and about religion and worship) and attributes mens conformity to outward force and corporal punishments. A faith subject to as many revolutions as the powers that enact it.

In 1773, the Rev. Isaac Backus, the most prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed in his Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, that when

And it appears to us that the true difference and exact limits between ecclesiastical and civil government is this, That the church is armed with light and truth, to pull down the strong holds of iniquity, and to gain souls to Christ, and into his church, to be governed by his rules therein; and again to exclude such from their communion, who will not be so governed; while the state is armed with the sword to guard the peace, and the civil rights of all persons and societies, and to punish those who violate the same. And where these two kinds of government, and the weapons which belong to them, are well distinguished. and improved according to the true nature and end of their institution. the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.

And while it's true that many of the provisions for "religious liberty" contained some restriction, as did the 1701 Charter of Delaware, restricting that liberty to those who acknowledged the existence of God:

BECAUSE no People can be truly happy, though under the greatest Enjoyment of Civil Liberties, if abridged of the Freedom of their Consciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship: And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits; and the Author as well as Object of all divine Knowledge, Faith and Worship, who only doth enlighten the Minds, and persuade and convince the Understandings of People, I do hereby grant and declare, That no Person or Persons, inhabiting in this Province or Territories, who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World; and professes him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the Civil Government, shall be in any Case molested or prejudiced, in his or their Person or Estate, because of his or their consciencious Persuasion or Practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious Worship, Place or Ministry, contrary to his or their Mind, or to do or suffer any other Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion.

others did not.

The Glorious First (I do love that name) is our protection - all of us - against someone else's religion becoming the law of the land. Many of the original immigrants to what became this country were fleeing countries where their religion was unaccepted, second-class, and sometimes even illegal. They didn't come here to found a brave new secular world by any means, but they did mean to have a country where they could worship as they pleased - and they understood that the only way that could be guaranteed in perpetuity was to guarantee the same right to others, even if those others are arrant heretics or blasphemers or (gasp!) Unitarians.

On January 1, 1802, then president Thomas Jefferson wrote the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, who had written him he Danbury Baptists were a religious minority in Connecticut, and they complained that in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature - as "favors granted." In Jefferson's letter is this sentence, referring to the First Amendment:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & 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.

Jefferson also wrote this, in reference to the Virginia Religious Tolerance Act:

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's 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 it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination..

"...of every denomination": that's the key. People of every denomination are to be free and equal in this country, regardless of just what that denomination is - or even if they are Christian. As can be seen from the Danbury Baptists, and Rev. Backus's letter below, Baptists were deeply concerned with this problem. After all, they had been repressed by the established Church of England in the old country, and they had no desire to see this state of affairs restored. As James Madison wrote in A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, addressed to the Virginia General Assemby, June 20, 1785:

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

And this is the point that seems to elude those evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who want their variety of religion esconced in the Capitol and the courts and the schools. Our Founders knew all about the devastation and death that occurs when a country switches from one established church to another. They were not against religion - of course not. Many of them were either Christians or Deists of one variety or another. But they were against any establishment of any particular religion - or variety of one.

The First Amendment is a bright distillation of the clear intentions of the Founders, which were that the government should not meddle with any church, and that no church should meddle with the government - in Backus's lovely phrasing, "where these two kinds ... are well distinguished. and improved according to the true nature and end of their institution, the effects are happy", "but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."

This is the main post in my entry - look here for day one and day three.