The First Ammendment

[Dr. Shane]

Just prior to the American Revelutionary War some states had the following laws:

• Only ordained ministers of the state-sponsored church could perform marriage ceremonies.
• Landowners must be members of the state-sponsored church
• Tax dollars were used to funneled exclusively to state-sponsored churchs
• A license was needed to preach.

There is an excellant article in Liberty Magazine this month.

>>> First Ammendment <<<

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Madison and the other Founders charted this course not from antipathy to religion but a desire to protect its purity, lest it fall into disrepute. This is typical Madison. Previously, with the Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty, he had blocked the insertion of “Jesus Christ” into the preamble. His reasoning was that “the better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.” Madison attempted to protect not only citizens and religion, but even the reputation of God. “His animating principle,” writes Loconte, “was not freedom from religion, but freedom for religion.”

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Although the leaders of the Great Awakening promulgated the belief that only religion can make a moral citizen, Madison, on the basis of history, disagreed. Amazingly, in the face of a “Christian” nation, Madison formulated a system that relied not upon unselfish Christianity, but upon self-interested competition between religions. Individual citizens were entrusted with religious freedom, while churches were furnished with “the right to worship freely and to use all legal means of persuasion to maintain themselves and woo new members.”

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