Posted on 07/06/2006 10:27:11 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
PING
That's a complete misinterpretation of the correspondence between Jefferson & the Danbury Baptists.
Explain please.
I believe the title is intended to be a plea rather than a statement of fact.
If you read his original draft,then the interpretation stated above does seem to fit.
Original draft:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpost.html
Just because he left certain things out of his final draft, doesn't mean the original sentiment wasn't intended.
Final draft:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
The Danbury Baptists were concerned their religious liberty would be infringed upon by state govt officials who did not share their faith.
While problems were few for the DBs, they also recognized this could change at any point because there were no state laws protecting their religion.
So they wrote Jefferson asking if the federal constitution/Bill of Rights might provide them the formal protections they sought. Jefferson told them "no" as the Bill of Rights (at that point) did not apply to the states.
Unfortunately, over the decades, the letter from the DBs to TJ and the letter to them from TJ has been used to claim all kinds of things that aren't true. However, actually reading both of the letters goes a long way towards understanding their meaning.
SPOTREP
Ping, post #7
IMO if one believes the precedent -that the Constitution is a written instrument .As such it's meaning does not alter.That which it meant when it was adopted it means now."
South Carolina v. the United States,199 U.S.437,448(1905)
or "the values of the Framers of the Constitution must be
applied in any case construeing the Constitution.Inferences from the text and history of the Constitution should be given great weight in determining the intentions of those who ratified the Constitution.The precedental value of
cases and commentators tends to increase, therefore in proportion to thei rproximity to the adoption of the Constitution, the Bill of rights, and any other amendments.
Powell v. McCormack395 Us.486,547 (1969)And if one considers
the Judicairy COmmittee reports of 19,Jan.1853(Mr Badger for the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Establishment Clause and Establisment of Religion) and corresponding report in the US House of Representives on same subject 27 March ,1854 (Mr Meacham for the House report) Both legal
and Congressional utterances agree with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ,Circuit Court Judge Suhrheinrich, Dec.2005 "The repeated reference to the Separation of Church and State ...(by the ACLU) ... has grown tiresome.The
first Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and State." a decisionupheld by the entire Court-shortly thereafter.
Jefferson was inaugurated the third President of the United States on March 4, 1801, following one of the most bitterly contested elections in history. His religion, or the alleged lack thereof, was a critical issue in the campaign. His Federalist Party foes vilified him as an infidel and atheist. The campaign rhetoric was so vitriolic that, when news of Jefferson’s election swept across the country, housewives in New England were seen burying family Bibles in their gardens or hiding them in wells because they expected the Holy Scriptures to be confiscated and burned by the new Administration in Washington. (These fears resonated with Americans who had received alarming reports of the French Revolution, which Jefferson was said to support, and the widespread desecration of religious sanctuaries and symbols in France.)
One pocket of support for the Jeffersonian Republicans in Federalist New England existed among the Baptists. At the dawn of the 19th century, Jefferson’s Federalist opponents, led by John Adams, dominated New England politics, and the Congregationalist church was legally established in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Baptists, who supported Jefferson, were outsiders—a beleaguered religious and political minority in a region where a Congregationalist–Federalist axis dominated political life.
On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Jefferson penned a missive to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. The Baptists had written the President a “fan” letter in October 1801, congratulating him on his election to the “chief Magistracy in the United States.” They celebrated Jefferson’s zealous advocacy for religious liberty and chastised those who had criticized him “as an enemy of religion[,] Law & good order because he will not, dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.”
In a carefully crafted reply, Jefferson endorsed the persecuted Baptists’ aspirations for religious liberty : Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & State.[3]
Although today Jefferson’s Danbury letter is thought of as a principled statement on the prudential and constitutional relationship between church and state, it was in fact a political statement written to reassure pious Baptist constituents that Jefferson was indeed a friend of religion and to strike back at the Federalist–Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him as an infidel and atheist in the recent campaign. James H. Hutson of the Library of Congress has concluded that the President “regarded his reply to the Danbury Baptists as a political letter, not as a dispassionate theoretical pronouncement on the relations between government and religion.”
--Patrick Henry
Pro-Life...of the Republic PING
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
"... the Judicairy COmmittee reports of 19,Jan.1853 for the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Establishment Clause and Establisment of Religion) and corresponding report in the US House of Representives on same subject 27 March ,1854 (Mr Meacham for the House report) Both legal
and Congressional utterances agree with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ,Circuit Court Judge Suhrheinrich, Dec.2005 "The repeated reference to the Separation of Church and State ...(by the ACLU) ... has grown tiresome."
What is that about a Mr. Meacham!?
My name is Meacham! Who is he? What? Huh?
I so appreciate all your pings - bump (:
Thank you very much. More on the way!
Congress of the United States of America March 27,1854 recieved the report of Mr.Meacham of the House Committee on
the Judiciary: (as cited in William J.Federer Americas' God
and Country:Encylopedia of quotations--Amerisearch Inc.2000
pp169-170Note 215,216 p.739. Mr.Meacham quoteddirectly from
Joseph Story's Commentaries in his report to the Judiciary
Committee,US HOuse of Representatives ,March 27,1854The subject was the Establishment clause--and the establishment
of religion.
http://www.fidelis.org/
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