Today commemorates the signing of the United States Constitution (September 17, 1787). If you’ve never read the Constitution, it’s not long and well worth reading (and re-reading).
After the Preamble, the most famous part of the Constitution is the First Amendment which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
And what does this mean? John Baker, a Professor Emeritus of Law at LSU and a visiting Professor at Georgetown and Oxford, explains:
In recent years the Supreme Court has placed the Establishment and the Free Exercise of Religion Clauses in mutual tension, but it was not so for the Framers. None of the Framers believed that a governmental connection to religion was an evil in itself. Rather, many (though not all) opposed an established church because they believed that it was a threat to the free exercise of religion. Their primary goal was to protect free exercise. That was the main thrust of James Madison’s famous Memorial and Remonstrance (1785), in which he argued that the state of Virginia ought not to pay the salaries of the Anglican clergy because that practice was a impediment to a person’s free connection to whatever religion his conscience directed him.
Nor did most of the Founding generation believe that government ought to be “untainted” by religion, or ought not to take an interest in furthering the people’s connection to religion. The Northwest Ordinance (1787), which the First Congress reenacted, stated: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary …
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