The
very intent of the First Amendment was to establish freedom of religion. This
First Amendment’s true purpose was to protect the church from
the government, because “The Founders wanted to guarantee
freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”[31]
They wanted to prevent another situation
similar to that in England where the government ran the church. The First
Amendment “was conceived primarily to keep the state out of
the church, not the church out of the state.”[32] It
is often misinterpreted as the opposite of its purpose.
As shown earlier, the
Founding Fathers were deeply rooted in
Christ, as were all their actions and
decisions concerning the Constitution.
So, why then, would they
create an amendment to limit the
things they valued the most? The Founding
Fathers wanted to enable the
church’s freedoms. They wanted to
free the church from state supervision
so that it had “a maximum
freedom in the realization of
its spiritual, moral, and educational
tasks.”[33]
The first amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”[34]
When one reads the amendment, its
purpose is very direct and obvious. The authors’ intent was protection of
religious freedom which the
state could not limit. Is not a law that is punishing churches for “political”
speech breaking the first amendment?
Thomas Jefferson wrote, in the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty in 1786,
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly that no
man…shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions
or his opinion in matters of religion…”[35]