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Imprimis, On Line
April, 1995
IMPRIMIS (im-pri-mis), taking its name from the Latin
term, "in the first place," is the publication of
Hillsdale College. Executive Editor, Ronald L.
Trowbridge; Managing Editor, Lissa Roche; Assistant,
Patricia A. DuBois. Illustrations by Tom Curtis. The
opinions expressed in IMPRIMIS may be, but are not
necessarily, the views of Hillsdale College and its
External Programs division. Copyright 1995. Permission
to reprint in whole or part is hereby granted, provided
a version of the following credit line is used:
"Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly
journal of Hillsdale College." Subscription free upon
request. ISSN 0277-8432. Circulation 585,000 worldwide,
established 1972. IMPRIMIS trademark registered in U.S.
Patent and Trade Office #1563325.
--------------------------------------------
Volume 24, No. 4
Hillsdale College,
Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
April 1995
--------------------------------------------
"The Religious Roots of Freedom"
by M. Stanton Evans
Director, National Journalism Center
--------------------------------------------
In this issue, M. Stanton Evans makes the case that the
Founders intended the First Amendment to protect
religion from government. He offers compelling
historical evidence to support this view and to refute
the "liberal history lesson," which teaches that
religion and freedom are in conflict.
Mr. Evans spoke before an audience of over 300
students, faculty, and guests during Hillsdale's Center
for Constructive Alternatives seminar, "God and Man:
Perspectives on Christianity in the 20th Century," last
November.
--------------------------------------------
As the renewed debate over prayer in the public schools
suggests, the cultural conflict of the modern era finds
vivid and enduring focus in the legal dispute about the
place of religion in the civic order. Here the battle
is overt, relentless, and pervasive--with traditional
belief and custom retreating before a secularist
onslaught in our courts and other public institutions.
During the past three decades, the U.S. Supreme
Court has handed down a series of rulings that decree a
"wall of separation" between affairs of state and the
precepts of religion. In the most controverted of these
cases, in 1962, the Court said an officially sponsored
prayer recited in the New York public schools was an
abridgement of our freedoms. This prayer read, in its
entirety: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence
on Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents,
our teachers, and our country." In the Court's opinion,
this supplication triggered the First Amendment ban
against an "establishment of religion," logic that was
later extended to reading the Bible and reciting the
Lord's Prayer in the classroom.
In adopting the First Amendment, according to the
Court, the Founders meant to sever all connection
between religious faith and government, requiring that
religion be a purely private matter. As Justice Hugo
Black put it in an oft--quoted statement: "The
'establishment of religion' clause of the First
Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the
federal government can set up a church. Neither can
pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or
prefer one religion over another...No tax in any
amount, large or small, can be levied to support any
religious activities or institutions, whatever they may
be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or
practice religion."
This doctrine has been affirmed and amplified in
many rulings since. In support of it, Black and his
successors (most recently Justice David Souter) have
offered a reading of our history that supposedly shows
the intentions of the people who devised the First
Amendment. In a nutshell, this tells us that the
Founders chiefly responsible for the Constitution's
religion clauses were Madison and Jefferson; that they
held views intensely hostile toward any governmental
backing for religion; and that the amendment was a
triumph for their separationist position.
Of Whole Cloth
The First Amendment depicted by Justice Black and other
liberal jurists is, unfortunately, a fabrication. The
Supreme Court's alleged history is a prime example of
picking and choosing elements from the past to suit the
ideological fashions of the present. If we consult the
history of the nation's founding, we find that the
Court and its supporters have misstated the material
facts about the issue in every possible fashion.
To begin with, state papers, legal arrangements,
and political comment of the founding generation show
that American culture in that period was suffused with
religious doctrine. The point is made by the very
concept of an "establishment of religion." This term
had a definite meaning in England and the colonies that
is critical to understanding the debate about the First
Amendment. It signified an official church that
occupied a privileged position with the state, was
vested with certain powers denied to others, and was
supported from the public treasury. Such was the Church
of England in Great Britain, and such also were
numerous churches in the colonies at the beginning of
our revolution.
The States' Churches
In 1775, no fewer than nine colonies had such
arrangements. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New
Hampshire had systems of local church establishment in
favor of the Congregationalists. In the South, from
Maryland on down, the establishments were Episcopal. In
New York, there was a system of locally supported
Protestant clergy. Because of growing religious
diversity within the states, pressure mounted to
disestablish these official churches. In particular,
increasingly numerous Baptists and Presbyterians made
headway against the Anglican position, which was
further weakened by the identification of many
Episcopal ministers with the English.
Even so, at the time of the Constitutional
Convention, the three New England states still had
their Congregational establishments. In other states,
there remained a network of official sanctions for
religious belief, principally the requirement that one
profess a certain kind of Christian doctrine to hold
public office or enjoy other legal privilege. With
local variations, these generally tended in the same
direction, and they make instructive reading alongside
the statements of Justices Black and Souter about the
supposed history of our institutions.
In South Carolina, for example, the Constitution of
1778 said that "the Christian Protestant religion shall
be deemed...the established religion of the state." It
further said that no religious society could be
considered a church unless it agreed "that there is one
eternal God and a future state of rewards and
punishment; that the Christian religion is the true
religion; that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments are of divine inspiration." South Carolina
also asserted that "no person who denies the existence
of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this
Constitution."
Similar statements can be gleaned from other state
enactments of the period. The Maryland Constituion of
1776 decreed, for instance, "a general and equal tax
for the support of the Christian religion." New Jersey
that year expressed its idea of toleraiton by saying
that "no Protestant inhibitant of this colony shall be
denied the enjoyment of any civil right."
Massachusetts, in 1780, authorized a special levy to
support "public Protestant teachers of piety, religion
and morality"--a formula adopted verbatim by New
Hampshire.
Official support for religious faith and state
religious requirements for public office persisted well
after adoption of the First Amendment. The established
church of Massachusetts was not abolished until 1833.
In New Hampshire, the requirement that one had to be
Protestant to serve in the legislature was continued
until 1877. In New Jersey, Roman Catholics were not
permitted to hold office until 1844. In Maryland, the
stipulation that one had to be a Christian lasted until
1826. As late as 1835, one had to be a Protestant to
take office in North Carolina; until 1868, the
requirement was that one had to be a Christian;
thereafter that one had to profess a belief in God.
The official sanction for religious belief provided
by the states was equally apparent at the federal
level, during and after the Revolution. Appeals for
divine assistance, days of prayer and fasting, and
other religious observance were common in the
Continental Congress. Among its first items of
business, in 1774, the Congress decided to appoint a
chaplain and open its proceedings with a prayer. When
it was objected that this might be a problem because of
diversity in religious doctrine, Sam Adams answered: "I
am not a bigot. I can hear a prayer from a man of piety
and virtue, who is at the same time a friend of his
country."
On June 12, 1775, the Congress called for "a day of
public humiliation, fasting, and prayer," wherein "[we]
offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise,
omnipotent, and merciful disposer of all events." In
observance of this fast day, Congress attended an
Anglican service in the morning and a Presbyterian
service in the afternoon.
During the Revolutionary War, Congress made
provision for military chaplains, recommended that
officers and men attend religious service, and
threatened court martial for anyone who misbehaved on
such occasions. It also adopted the Northwest
Ordinance, stressing the need for "religion and
morality," appropriated money for the Christian
education of Indians, and encouraged the printing of a
Bible. The Northwest Ordinance and the measures
regarding chaplains, official prayer, and education of
the Indians were re-adopted by the first Congress under
the new Constitution and maintained for many years
thereafter.
Crumbling Wall
Such was the body of doctrine and official practice
that surrounded the First Amendment--immediately
predating it, adopted while it was being discussed and
voted on, and enduring long after it was on the books.
The resulting picture is very different from any notion
of America as a country run by secularists and Deists.
Nor does it look very much like a country in which the
governing powers were intent on creating a "wall of
separation" between church and state, denying official
support to the precepts of religion.
This was the background to Madison's motion on June
8, 1789, introducing a set of amendments to the
Constitution, culled from the proposals of conventions.
Among the measures that he offered was this pertaining
to an establishment of religion: "The civil rights of
none shall be abridged on account of religious belief,
nor shall any national religion be established...." In
view of the weight that has been given to Madison's
personal opinions on the subject, his comments on this
occasion are of special interest. For example,
challenged by Roger Sherman as to why such guarantees
were needed, given the doctrine of "enumerated powers,"
Madison said:
he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that
Congress shall not establish a religion and enforce
the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men
to worship God in any manner contrary to their
conscience. Whether the words are necessary or not,
he did not mean to say, but they had been required
by some of the state conventions, who seemed to
entertain an opinion that [under the "necessary and
proper" clause]...Congress...might infringe the
rights of conscience and establish a national
religion; to prevent these effects he presumed the
amendment was intended, and he thought it as well
expressed as the nature of language would admit.
[Italics added.]
In this and other exchanges, the House debate made
two things clear about the Bill of Rights and its
religion clauses: (1) Madison was introducing the
amendments not because he thought they were needed but
because others did, and because he had promised to act
according to their wishes; (2) the aim was to prevent
Congress from establishing a "national" religion that
would threaten the religious diversity of the states.
Given the varied practices we have noted, ranging from
establishments and doctrinal requirements for public
office to relative toleration, any "national" religion
would have been a source of angry discord.
Against that backdrop, the meaning of the
establishment clause as it came out of conference
should be crystal clear: "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion." The agency
prohibited from acting is the national legislature;
what it is prevented from doing is passing any law
"respecting" an establishment of religion. In other
words, Congress was forbidden to legislate at all
concerning church establishment--either for or against.
It was prevented from setting up a national established
church; equally to the point, it was prevented from
interfering with the established churches in the
states.
Shield Becomes Sword
Though this history is blurred or ignored, it is no
secret, and its general features are sometimes
acknowledged by liberal spokesmen. It may be conceded,
for example, that the First Amendment was intended to
be a prohibition against the federal government. But
that guarantee was supposedly broadened by the
Fourteenth Amendment, which "applied" the Bill of
Rights against the states. Thus what was once
prohibited only to the federal government is now also
prohibited to the states.
Here we meet the Orwellian concept of "applying" a
protection of the states as a weapon against them--
using the First Amendment to achieve the very thing it
was intended to prevent. The legitimacy of this
reversal has been convincingly challenged by such
constitutional scholars as Raoul Berger, Lino Graglia,
and James McClellan. But for present purposes, let us
simply assume the First Amendment restrictions on
Congress were "applied" against the states. What then?
What did this prohibit?
One thing we know for sure is that it did not
prohibit officially sponsored prayer. As we have seen,
Congress itself engaged in officially sponsored, tax-
supported prayer, complete with paid official
chaplains, from the very outset-- and continues to do
so to this day. Indeed, in one of the greatest ironies
of this historical record, we see the practice closely
linked with passage of the First Amendment--supplying a
refutation of the Court's position that is as
definitive as could be wished.
The language that had been debated off and on
throughout the summer and then hammered out in
conference finally passed the House of Representatives
on September 24, 1789. On the very next day, the self-
same House of Representatives passed a resolution
calling for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving.
Here is the language the House adopted: "We acknowledge
with grateful hearts the many single favors of Almighty
God, especially by affording them an opportunity
peacefully to establish a constitutional government for
their safety and happiness."
The House accordingly called on President
Washington to issue a proclamation designating a
national day of prayer and thanksgiving (the origin of
our current legal holiday). This was Washington's
response:
It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the
providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be
grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore
His protection and favor....That great and glorious
Being who is the beneficent author of all the good
that was, that is, or that ever will be, that we
may then unite in rendering unto Him our sincere
and humble thanks for His kind care and protection
of the people.
Such were the official sentiments of Congress and
the president immediately after the adoption of the
First Amendment. These statements are far more
doctrinal and emphatic than the modest prayer
schoolchildren are forbidden to recite because it
allegedly violates the First Amendment. If we accept
the reasoning of the modern Court, as Robert Cord
observes, both Congress and George Washington violated
the intended meaning of the First Amendment from its
inception.
The more logical conclusion, of course, is that
Congress knew much better what it meant by the language
adopted the preceding day than does our self-
consciously evolving Court two centuries later. And in
the view of Congress, there was nothing either in law
or in logic to bar it from engaging in officially
sponsored, tax-supported prayer, then or ever. It
follows that the amendment can't possibly bar the
states from doing likewise.
Madison and Jefferson
To all this, the liberal answer is, essentially: James
Madison. Whatever the legislative history, we are
informed, Madison in his subsequent writings took
doctrinaire positions on church-state separation, and
these should be read into the First Amendment. This,
however, gets the matter topsy-turvy. Clearly, if the
Congress that passed the First Amendment, and the
states that ratified it, didn't agree with Madison's
more stringent private notions, as they surely didn't,
then these were not enacted. It is the common
understanding of the relevant parties, not the ideas of
a single individual, especially those expressed in
other settings, that defines the purpose of a law or
constitutional proviso.
Furthermore, the Court's obsession with the
individual views of Madison is highly suspect. It
contrasts strangely with judicial treatment of his
disclaimers in the House debate, and of his opinions on
other constitutional matters. Madison held strict-
constructionist views on the extent of federal power,
arguing that the Constitution reserved undelegated
authority to the states. These views of Madison are
dismissed entirely by the Court. Thus we get a curious
inversion: Madison becomes the Court's authority on the
First Amendment, even though the notions he later
voiced about this subject were not endorsed by others
involved in its adoption. On the other hand, he isn't
cited on the residual powers of the states, even though
his statements on this topic were fully endorsed by
other supporters of the Constitution and relied on by
the poeple who voted its approval. It is hard to find a
thread of consistency in this--beyond the obvious one
of serving liberal ideology.
As peculiar as the Court's selective use of Madison
is its resort to Jefferson. The anomaly here is that
Jefferson was not a member of the Constitutional
Convention, or of the Congress that considered the Bill
of Rights, or of the Virginia ratifying convention. But
he had strongly separationist views (up to a point) and
had worked with Madison for disestablishment and
religious freedom in Virginia. For the Court, this
proves the First Amendment embodied Jefferson's
statement in 1802, in a letter to the Baptists of
Connecticut, about a "wall of separation."
Again we pass over the Lewis Carroll logic--in this
case deducing the intent of an amendment adopted in
1789 from a letter written 13 years later by a person
who had no official role in its adoption. Rather than
dwelling on this oddity, we shall simply go to the
record and see what Jefferson actually said about the
First Amendment and its religion clauses. In his second
inaugural address, for example, he said:
In matters of religion, I have considered that its
free exercise is placed by the Constitution
independent of the powers of the general
government. I have therefore undertaken on no
occasion to prescribe the religious exercises
suited to it. But I have left them as the
Constitution found them, under the direction or
discipline of state or church authorities
acknowledged by the several religious societies.
Jefferson made the same point a few years later to
a Presbyterian clergyman, who inquired about his
attitude toward Thanksgiving proclamations:
I consider the government of the United States as
interdicted from intermeddling with religious
institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or
exercises. This results from the provision that no
law shall be made respecting the establishment of
religion or the free exercise thereof, but also
from that which reserves to the states the powers
not delegated to the United States. Certainly no
power over religious discipline has been delegated
to the general government. It must thus rest with
the states as far as it can be in any human
authority.
The irresistible conclusion is that there was no
wall of separation between religious affirmation and
civil government in the several states, nor could the
First Amendment, with or without the Fourteenth
Amendment, have been intended to create one. The wall
of separation, instead, was between the federal
government and the states and was meant to make sure
the central authority didn't meddle with the customs of
local jurisdictions.
As a matter of constitutional law, the Court's
position in these religion cases is an intellectual
shambles--results-oriented jurisprudence at its most
flagrant. An even greater scandal is the extent to
which the Justices have rewritten the official record
to support a preconceived conclusion: a performance
worthy of regimes in which history is tailored to the
interests of the ruling powers. In point of fact,
America's constitutional settlement--up to and
including the First Amendment--was the work of people
who believed in God, and who expressed their faith as a
matter of course in public prayer and other
governmental practice.
--------------------------------------------
M. Stanton Evans is chairman of the Education and
Research Institute and director of the National
Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. The Center trains
young, aspiring reporters and boasts alumni at the
Detroit News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington
Post, CNN, C-SPAN, Evans & Novak, the Associated Press,
plus dozens of journals and newspapers around the
country.
Mr. Evans has also served as managing editor of
Human Events, associate editor of National Review, and
editor of the Indianapolis News. For many years a
syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, he has
written seven books, including: Revolt on the Campus,
The Future of Conservatism: From Taft to Reagan and
Beyond, and Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative's
View of America's Government. This article is adapted
with permission from his book The Theme Is Freedom:
Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition
(Regnery, 1994) and also appeared in the January 23,
1995 issue of National Review.
--------------------------------------------
"What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?"
by D. James Kennedy*
Senior Minister,
Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
and President,
Coral Ridge Ministries
--------------------------------------------
*With Jerry Newcombe. From What If Jesus Had Never
Been Born? (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994)
--------------------------------------------
Reverend D. James Kennedy also participated in the
November 1994 CCA, addressing an audience of over
1,500.
--------------------------------------------
Some people have made transformational changes in one
department of human learning or in one aspect of human
life, and their names are forever enshrined in the
annals of human history. But Jesus Christ, the greatest
man who ever lived, has changed virtually every aspect
of human life--and most people don't know it. The
greatest tragedy of the Christmas holiday each year is
not so much its commercialization (gross as that is),
but its trivialization. How tragic it is that people
have forgotten Him to whom they owe so very much.
Jesus says in Revelation 21:5, "Behold, I make all
things new." (Behold! [idou in Greek]: "Note well,"
"look closely," "examine carefully.") Everything that
Jesus Christ touched, He utterly transformed. He
touched time when He was born into this world; He had a
birthday, and that birthday utterly altered the way we
measure time.
Someone has said He has turned aside the river of
ages out of its course and lifted the centuries off
their hinges. Now, the whole world counts time as
Before Christ (B.C.) and A.D.
Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a
mustard seed, which is tiny in and of itself; but, when
fully grown, it provides shade and a resting place for
many birds. This parable certainly applies to an
individual who embraces Christ; it also applies to
Christianity in the world.
Christianity's roots were small and humble--an
itinerant rabbi preached and did miracles for three and
a half years around the countryside of subjugated
Israel. And today there are more than 1.8 billion
professing believers in Him found in most of the
nations on earth! There are tens of millions today who
make it their life's aim to serve Him alone.
Emperors and governors were the men with power in
Christ's day. But now their bodies rot in their
sepulchers, and their souls await the Final Judgment.
They have no followers today. No one worships them. No
one serves them or awaits their bidding.
Despite its humble origins, the Church has made
more changes on earth for the good than any other
movement or force in history.
But, the salvation of souls is the primary goal of
the spread of Christianity. All other benefits are
basically just by-products of what Christianity has
often brought when applied to daily living. When Jesus
took upon Himself the form of man, He imbued mankind
with a dignity and inherent value that had never been
dreamed of before. Whatever Jesus touched or whatever
He did transformed that aspect of human life. Many
people will read about the innumerable small incidents
in the life of Christ while never dreaming that those
casually mentioned "little" things were to transform
the history of humankind.
--------------------------------------------
D. James Kennedy is the most listened to Presbyterian
minister in the world today. His television and radio
broadcasts are heard in 25,000 cities and towns across
America. He heads up five major ministries. He is the
senior minister of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church,
which has over 8,000 members and has been cited by
Decision magazine as one of the top five churches in
the nation. He is the president of Evangelism Explosion
International, which trains laymen in evangelism in 190
countries and 300 denominations. He also oversees the
Westminster Academy, a K-12 school for over 1000
students, and is chancellor of Knox Theological
Seminary. Finally, he is president of Coral Ridge
Ministries, a national network television ministry that
was launched in 1978. Its one-hour telecast is
broadcast on more than 470 stations and five cable
networks and is also broadcast overseas. Its radio
program is regularly heard on over 500 stations.
###
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