Lovable Curmudgeon wrote:
"At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.
An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation. But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner which they believe their accountability to Him requires...
The rights of conscience are...beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority...
The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity,
but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government."
--Justice Joseph Story--
Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840
*Historical note: Justice story served for 34 years on the US Supreme Court and is the founder of Harvard Law School.
"At the time of the adoption of the Constitut... (
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