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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.legal,net.religion,net.politics
Subject: Re: Violation of separation church and state????
Message-ID: <974@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-May-85 22:54:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.974
Posted: Tue May 28 22:54:00 1985
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> .... is in a category of usages which do
> not amount to re-establishing a specific religion (which is really all
> that was prohibited by the Bill of Rights)

This is a common misconception.  The following quotation is from the majority
Supreme Court opinion in McGowan v. Maryland, 366 US 420 (1961) -- a decision
which, incidentally, upheld a Sunday closing law.

	But, the First Amendment, in its final form, did not simply bar a
	congressional enactment *establishing a church* [italics in the
	original]; it forbade all laws *respecting an establishment of
	religion*.  Thus, this Court has given the Amendment a "broad
	interpretation" ... "in the light of its history and the evils it was
	designed forever to suppress...." ...  It has found that the First and
	Fourteenth Amendments afford protection against religious
	establishment far more extensive than merely to forbid a national or
	state church.

Their interpretation was based largely on the legislative history of the
First Amendment; for example, the original wording, as proposed by James
Madison, read:

	The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious
	belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor
	shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on
	any pretext, infringed.

The opinion notes that the word "national" was apparently included to spare
the official religions in a number of states....


		--Steve Bellovin