The First Amendment then and now

Most American's today believe that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution sets up a “wall of separation” between church and state. Those American's who think this way do so because they have heard the phrase “wall of separation” repeated so often on news shows and in pop culture that they just take it for granted that it is true. But this widely held current view is a gross distortion of the First Amendment and a radical departure from the views and intent of the overwhelming majority our country’s Founding Fathers.

The First Amendment actually says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Notice that the two words so often used when discussing the First Amendment (wall and separation) are no where to be found in the amendment. In fact, the first congress that passed this amendment along with the other nine amendments that form the Bill Of Rights, also passed a bill to pay for the printing of Bibles that were to be used among the Indians. They also established paid chaplains for the military, for the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

We should also remember that nine of the thirteen states that ratified the First Amendment to the Constitution had official state churches. No one then ever suggested that the First Amendment outlawed those official state churches and they did not see these things as contradictory.

It’s interesting that the constitution of the now defunct/atheistic Soviet Union did formally make a clear separation between church and state. Article 124 in that constitution states:

In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the State, and the school from the church...

The Soviets also separated the church from education. Our country too has succeeded in removing Christianity from the public schools in the past forty years. You might think that the American judges who did this were reading the Soviet Constitution and not our own!

The U.S. Constitution formed a confederation of self-governing states (i.e. nations). The founders tried to tie down and limit the federal government to a very narrow sphere of authority. The Bill of Rights was written to further restrain the then very, very, small federal government.

Today many of our leaders (liberal and conservative) ignore many of the most fundamental laws of our land or, as they do with the First Amendment, they twist it to say the very opposite of what it really says. Christian people must obey the law; we also need to insist that those in authority also obey the law. Our children and Grandchildren's liberty to worship the God of scripture may be at stake if we don’t learn and work to restore and uphold some of those most fundamental laws written into the Constitution.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith