Would the Real First Amendment Please Stand Up?

To the Editor:

I can't take it any more! I have grown weary of hearing people send up the battle cry that we must save our government from the influence of religion by saying that the Constitution (or its writers) supports this idea. Has anyone read the U.S. Constitution?

A recent letter in The Readers' Page scolded President Bush. The author wrote, "The framers of the Constitution intended government to be completely separate from the church . . .," implying that the Constitution protects government from religious influences.

In fact, the Constitution's intention is quite the opposite - to protect religion from government.

H.

Okay, see, this is the kind of thing that makes me want to do a headplant into my monitor. It's what drove me nuts about the Alito confirmation hearings; I simply can't stomach people who argue that they have some sort of monopoly on ultimate constitutional interpretation. How many times did we hear from Alito that he would make his decisions "based on the constitution," as if other Supreme Court justices are going to Beatrix Potter as a legal reference? Just saying that you're upholding the constitution doesn't cut it. It's a two-hundred-year-old document, and it has multiple interpretations. If you interpret the constitution to mean that African Americans are three fifths of a human being, I don't have a lot of time for your interpretation. Similarly, if you interpret the constitution as some sort of one-way valve that protects religion from the people, but not the people from religion, your interpretation is about as valuable to me as a door-sized poster of Pat Roberston, which is to say, as tinder.

The constitution says this regarding religion, in the first amendment of the bill of rights:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

That's it. That's the line. Yes, the constitution clearly says that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. It would be nice for folks like H. if it ONLY said that, but it doesn't. It also states that Congress is not to make any laws that have anything to do with establishing state religion. Now, certainly, that is up for interpretation, but even the narrowest definition has to concede that this sentence is meant, to some degree, to keep religion out of the law. Arguing that the first amendment is meant only to protect religion from government displays just as selective a reading as maintaining that it is only meant to protect the government from religion. Most of the freedoms granted by the bill of rights are "freedoms to:" the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to a fair trial, and so on. Culturally, however, we recognize a "Freedom of religion." Not to, but of. In this case, "of" implies both a freedom to and a freedom from. Yes, we are free to practice our religions (even Native Americans, who gained that right in the 1970's), but we are also protected from being subjected to the religion of others. This is a recurring theme in the constitution; the drafters believed that the minority must be protected from the tyranny of the majority.

If you need any further evidence that the drafters of the constitution did not intend any religion to influence the law, go ahead and flip through the document, counting the references to God. If you were very thorough, you found exactly one, that being the dating convention "Year of our Lord." That's it. That's where the argument ends for me. You simply can not realistically argue that a group of educated men, the majority of whom were devout Christians, meant to write a document establishing a government open the religious influence, but somehow forgot to make even one salient reference to their religion.

Thankfully, they didn't forget. They did it on purpose, because unlike so many of us today, these men understood that governments beholden to religion have historically been the most tyrannical, corrupt governments in existence, and Christianity is by no means immune to the trend. The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials are all examples of what happens when the government is used as a puppet of the Christian church, and when the church is corrupted by the influences of government. In a sense, protecting the government from religion is protecting the religion too, since heavy participation in government has a tendency to corrupt religion. I contend you're already seeing this in America, as charismatic televangelists and religious media figures become wealthy by supporting corporate concerns and assisting in numbing the population through fear and hate. They will go on for hours about Muslims, homosexuals, and feminists, but they conveniently forget about scripture that promotes charity, kindness, and tolerance. Did you know that the Bible calls for the elimination of all debts every seven years, and the redistribution of wealth every fifty years? James Dobson does, but you'll never hear him mention it. That's not the kind of "Christian Government" he wants.

If you think that religion should have more influence in government, that's fine. I think you're fucking nuts, but you're allowed to be fucking nuts. If you want to argue your point, however, you're going to have to come armed with something a little more persuasive than a sub par understanding of constitutional text and your belief that the founding fathers were a bunch of puritans. Maybe the reason folks are "weary of hearing people send up the battle cry that we must save our government from the influence of religion by saying that the Constitution (or its writers) supports this idea" is that they keep arguing against it. I'd hate to be that firmly entrenched on the losing side of an argument too. Have I read the Constitution? Yep. Do I agree with you? Nope. Sometimes it's just not that simple. You can be as weary as you want to be, but if you want to shut us up, you'll need to be convincing as well. That's something you've not even begun to approach.

"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."
- Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, ratified by the U.S. senate 1797