One of the smartest things the framers of the United States Constitution did for the future of the government they were designing was to both mandate freedom from state-sponsored religion and freedom to choose one’s own form of worship. These principles were concisely summed up in a single phrase in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; …” Unfortunately the “establishment” clause has recently been eroded by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and is likely to be further eroded in Carson vs. Makin, a case originating in Maine. The framers weren’t operating in an historical vacuum. They were among the most informed, traveled and experienced men of their era. And they were fully aware of a clear lesson taught by history: that mixing religion with the muscle and money of state power tends to create a toxic brew of intolerance, persecution and violence. They were doubtless mindful of the century-and-a-half of European religious warfare which raged between Catholics and Protestants from the early 1500s through the mid-1600s. Carson arises from a Maine statute that requires communities without a public secondary school — numbering over […]
