This
assertion is false on the face of it.
The only place religion is mention in the Constitution is Article 6, at
the end of the third clause: [N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a
Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. Then again in the First Amendment’s Establish
and Free Exercise Clauses. The
Constitution was not binding upon the states, only the federal government. It was through incorporation via the “A
constitutional doctrine whereby selected provisions of the Bill of Rights are
made applicable to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.” That the Bill of rights were imposed upon the states. The latest example of this in the Second
Amendment decision where the Court decided that it applies to the states as
well as to the federal government.
The 1st
Amendment thus prevents the establishment of a national religion, and it also
prohibits government aid to any religion, even on an non-preferential basis, as
well as protecting the right of the individual to choose to worship, or not, as
he or she sees fit. The Bill of Rights,
however, had no effect on how a state treated its churches. Unlike today, the
Bill of Rights applied only to the rules and laws of the federal government.
The states were still free to establish churches, to direct church taxes be
paid, and to even require attendance in church, all within the bounds of the
state's own constitution. As noted below, many did. While the "free
exercise" clause is undoubtedly referring to an individual right, the
"establishment" clause refers to a state power. This clause not only
prohibited the federal government from establishing a national religion, it also
prevented the federal government from forcing a state to disestablish any state
religion.
In 1702 all
13 American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. This support
varied from tax benefits to religious requirements for voting or serving in the
legislature. Eight States had official
religions at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. The five that did
not, had provisions which discriminated against those who did not believe in
Christianity or at least a Judeo-Christian G-d.
It was not
until the 1947 in the Everson decision that the SCOTUS “discovered” that the
14th applied the Establishment Clause to the states that any such
“nullification” would have been based on the 14th. That “discovery” was written
into the opinion in Everson by Hugo Black, Klansman and anticatholic bigot. The
doctrine of separation of church and state that the incorporation of the
Establishment Clause accomplished was fundamental Klan doctrine, as well as
secular humanist doctrine.
The U. S.
Supreme Court has issued two bans on prayer in public schools. The first came
in 1962 and the second was issued in 1963. The bans were the result of a court
case sponsored in part by Madalyn Murray O'Hair. She was but one of the
litigants in the lawsuit, but her name became synonymous with the case and the
promotion of atheism. The ban not only outlawed prayer in public schools, but
it also banned Bible reading in public schools.
In the 1983 Marsh
v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) was a case in which the Supreme Court of the
United States held that government funding for chaplains was constitutional because
of the "unique history" of the United States. Futhermore said, “To
invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making laws is not, in
these circumstances, an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward
establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgement of beliefs widely held
among the people of this country.”
This is the
first time that the prayer of public officials has reached the Supreme Court, and
it struck down the lower courts’ restriction on them from opening a government meeting
with a prayer, such as when the
6th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals who decided on March18th, 1999 that the Board
of Education in Cleveland, OH, could not pray before their meetings. The court
ruled that prayers are an illegal endorsement of religion. So show me
in the history of the creation of the United States of America where freedom
from religion was the reason for its creation. To so assert is to create your
own history.
No comments:
Post a Comment