Letters to Ed: On the Constitution and Religion

Dear Ed,

I’m writing to you because I’ve been frustrated from expression of thoughts elsewhere. It’s a “free” country, in a social and spiritual sense, where you can say or write what you want. But it’s not “free,” in the economic sense, to be ensured that others get a chance to hear or read it.

We still have the First Amendment to the United States Constitution—and may I repeat it here?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

I choose to comment on religion—its “establishment” and “free exercise,” in particular. Opinions on what the clause means vary from, at one extreme, no mention whatever of beliefs about a Higher Power in public to, at the opposite extreme, making one religion the official (or at least dominant, unrestrained and pampered) religion of the USA.

The one extreme, i.e. no public utterance at all, hinders “free exercise”—for example, Christians have the Constitutional right to bless, in the presence of other diners, their meals taken in restaurants. (Jesus spoke out against showing off your piety in Matthew 6:1-5 (how does that jibe with evangelism, by the way?)—but there is no law against public prayer in this country, as long as others are not forced to join in--well and good. In fact, I am free to say in this forum, thank God for that.)

The latter extreme, making Christianity the official religion of our nation, is “establishment.” Christianity was truer to its roots when it was the religion of a persecuted minority, in my opinion. From not long after the Edict of Milan (313 C.E.) to the present, Christendom has at many times been drunk with power as the majority or official religion.

Today in the United States, Christianity is in the majority and pressing for virtual takeover of the government—while many of its most powerful (or at least loudest), self-appointed spokesmen insist it is “persecuted.”. If vehemently disagreeing with, for example, a television pastor who says we should “blow away [our Middle Eastern enemies] in the name of the Lord” (in spite of what our Lord said about how we are to treat our enemies—v. Matthew 5:43-48) is “persecution,” then so be it.

JTE