@RockStar
“Actually, when I said that the Constitution doesn't need to be changed, I was referring to the Progressive view that the Constitution is outdated and needs to be changed in sense of being rewritten.”
That’s not the universal progressive view. I know there are people on here who see it that way, but that’s mostly because they come from countries that rewrite their constitution every fifty ears or so.
“And I could have clarified what I meant, but you prefer to hide over here and respond to my comments where I can't see them and respond because you are cowards.”
More like we’re used to moderators like Lady Checkmate that throw around the banhammer more often than construction workers use their proper hammers.
“As for the first amendment, I am historically correct on the matter. The Church of England was all over the 13 colonies and it was John Leland and Isaac Bacchus who came from Virginia to speak to Madison about a clause to protect freedom of religion.”
I’m not going to deny that the CoE was one of the case studies for separating church and state. But I call bullshit on the claim that the law isn’t intended to cover non-Christians.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions45.html
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.
Hard to get much more explicit about the author’s intent than a Thomas Jefferson quote. Of course, the fact that they had this discussion is an important reminder that “The Founder’s Intent” was never a monolith. Lawmakers argued over wording then just as much as now.
“That doesn't mean that it only applies to Christians. But at the time, the historical context was about protecting Christian freedom. It is because of some Baptists from Virginia who had to fight for that clause to be included, that Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. have religious freedom in the US.”
I mean, kinda, but not really. The Baptists would have wanted the law to explicitly reference Jesus Christ. Jefferson’s own private sympathies were with the “infidels” in his quote, because Thomas Jefferson was a deist who believed in the historicity of Jesus, but that the miracles were all made up. Thanking the Baptists for it does not add up. It’s the deists who made sure the rules of religious freedom were all-encompassing. The first amendment, as it exists today, is a compromise between the desires of several groups of people.
