One of the reasons for the First Amendent's guarantee of religious freedom (Congress couldn't establish a religion and couldn't prohibit the free exercise of religion) being listed first was the power in some of the colonies of some established churches, particularly the Congregationalists and the Anglicans. They had become fat, lazy and rich through taxing everyone for a state church. Doing something frivolous on Sunday could get you mobbed, or thrown in jail. The American colonies which became the 13 states had many, many denominations and sects--Dunkards and Mennonites (my background), Presbyterians and all sorts of Dutch and English Calvinist groups, German Lutherans (my current church but with the Scandivanians mixed in), Quakers, Moravians, French Huguenots, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and Jews. New York alone had 12 different denominations.
These "dissenters" wanted to be free of the taxes and wanted to preach their own faith from the pulpits (many states had state-paid ministers). The first amendment was added to the Constitution in "The Bill Rights" and was intended to stop government supported sects, not to create a wall of separation and have religion (more specifically Christianity) removed from the public square, as our Supreme Court has done for the last 50 years.
Now we have a federal government hostile to religion (primarily any group respecting The Bible) with many state and local governments following along. Instead of Christianity, a religion, it promotes "spirituality" in environmentalism, multiculturalism, greenish-Gore climate protection programs, humanism, progressivism (the core of socialism), feminism, and globalism. "Spirituality" is very subjective and has no outside standard of truth, with the result that adherents soon become coersive and demand compliance to their version of truth, the very principles the First Amendment was supposed to prevent.
Friday, December 09, 2011
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