"Congress has no power to make any religious establishments." Roger Sherman, Congress, August 19, 1789
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
"No religious doctrine shall be established by law." Elbridge Gerry, Annals of Congress 1:729-731
"The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion." Charles Pinckney, Constitutional Convention, 1787
"The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, passed unanimously by Congress, signed by Founding Father John Adams
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. "Thomas Jefferson letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT "The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear." ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787
Now, there are some that point to Declaration on Independence as something showing we are a Christian nation. They believe that the text of this document shows that the United States was founded upon Christian principles, and church and state must remain intertwined (theocracy) for this nation to continue.
There are a couple of problems in this argument. The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. This means is that it has no authority over our laws, lawmakers, or ourselves. It cannot be cited as precedent or binding in any courtroom. The purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to make the case for dissolving the ties between the colonies and Great Britain; once that was achieved, the role of the Declaration was finished. That leaves open the possibility that it expressed the will of the same people who wrote the Constitution. Leaving aside for the moment whether or not that intention should bind us, there are still a serious flaw. First, religion itself is never mentioned in the Declaration. This makes it difficult to argue that any particular religious dogma should guide our government.
Second, what little is mentioned in the Declaration is only compatible with Christianity. The Declaration refers to "Nature's God," "Creator," and "Divine Providence." These are all terms used in the deism that was common among those responsible for the founders. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was himself a deist who was opposed to many Christian doctrines, in particular beliefs about the supernatural. One common misuse of the Declaration is to argue that it says our rights come from God and, therefore, there are no legitimate interpretations of the rights in the Constitution that would be contrary to God. The first problem is that the Declaration references a "Creator" and not the Christian "God" meant by people making the argument. The second problem is that the "rights" mentioned in the Declaration are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" none of which are "rights" mentioned in the Constitution.
Finally, the Declaration of Independence also makes it clear that governments created by mankind get their powers from the consent of the governed, not from any gods. This is why the Constitution does not make any mention of any gods. There is no reason to think that there is anything illegitimate about an interpretation of any of the rights outlined in the Constitution merely because it runs contrary to what people think that their conception of a god would want.
The roots of the religious right stretch back to the 1930s or 1940s, when neo-evangelical leaders started forging close ties with financially conservative businessmen. They shared objections common to the political and theological liberalism of mainline denominational leaders in the National Council of Churches (NCC), and they worked together to build a network of colleges, parachurch organizations, radio and television stations, and political action networks that joined together Christian values, Jeffersonian democracy and free-market economics. While NCC-affiliated churches began a steady membership decline in 1960, the leading conservative denominations tended to thrive from the 1950s to the 21st century. The friendship between Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham and Richard Nixon revealed increasingly cozy relations between conservative Protestants and Republicans who promised to bring order to a chaotic world. This conservative coalition included Protestants and Catholics. After Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963) prohibited school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings, respectively, evangelicals sought to return Christian instruction to public schools. When Roe v. Wade (1973) legalized first- and second-trimester abortion across the nation, conservative Protestants opposed it alongside Catholics, spurred in part by the advocacy of evangelicals such as C. Everett Coop and Francis Schaeffer. Religious conservatives also opposed the women's-liberation and gay-rights movements in the name of upholding gender roles and biblical teachings on sexuality. Phyllis Schlafly, the Catholic grassroots Republican activist who gained fame with her 1964 book A Choice, Not an Echo, founded the Eagle Forum and led the successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. The signing of evangelical and Catholics Together by conservative Protestant and Catholic scholars in 1994 signaled cooperation between the two groups.
The same ones who spout "religious freedom" don't really know what it means, and in reality only want it for themselves. Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom to change one's religion or beliefs.
It's the first thing mentioned in the first Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In order to protect this fundamental right, Americans must have constant vigilance, and recent threats to the minority religions in the US are cause for alarm. Groups of religious minorities (non-Christians) face threats in the form of hate speech, discrimination, and violence. Analysis of FBI hate-crime data from 2017 reveals that 80 percent of all incidents of religiously motivated hate crimes were motivated by anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bias. The most fatal attack on American Jews happened in October 2018, with the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The attack was similar to a hate crime that occurred in 2012, in which a gunman with ties to white supremacists killed six people and wounded three others praying at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. Rather than safeguarding protections for religious people, religious liberty has instead been perverted to strip away the rights of a diverse range of communities. From minority religions, to LGBT.
Twenty-eight years ago, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was signed into law to clarify and expand upon the religious liberty. RFRA says the government "should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification" and that it only do so if it furthers a compelling governmental interest in the least restrictive way. The purpose was "to protect the free exercise of religion" while defining and robustly protecting the right of religious liberty for all Americans. It passed with widespread, bipartisan support and was triumphed among faith communities, civil rights advocates, and politicians alike. Since the passing of the RFRA, 21 states have adopted similar legislation.
In 2014, however, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby marked a shift in the interpretation of religious exemptions from religiously neutral laws. Rather than simply protecting the rights of religious people, RFRA was expanded and misused to discriminate. By treating two for-profit corporations, craft chain Hobby Lobby and furniture-maker Conestoga Wood Specialties, like individual people, the ruling allowed the religious beliefs of the company owners to override their employees, rescinding access to no-cost contraceptive health coverage to which they are entitled to under federal law. The ruling expanded the use of religious exemptions by redefining the scope of federal RFRA protections to include for-profit corporations. The legacy of the Hobby Lobby decision was continued under the Trump administration as religious liberty is misused to discriminate, such as religious minorities, the non-religious, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. The right to religious liberty has increasingly been exploited and misused in order to favor the interests of select, privileged conservative Protestant Christians over the basic rights of the most Americans.
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