Your Opinion: Response to Solomon on Constitution

Dear Editor:

To Warren Solomon. As to your factual feedback to my letter to the editor. The full text of the section of Article VI of the Constitution which you quoted is: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Member of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States."

This rule had nothing to do with secular or not. It addressed the fact that several of the original 13 states that formed the Union had pre-existing state constitutions which blocked office to members of various religions. The articles mandate that this kind of discrimination would not be permitted at either the federal Congress or state legislatures.

As to the Second Amendment the full text is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This amendment, among the first 10 (Bill of Rights) was required by the states as a condition for ratification. They were horrified of a national government which would do an England on them and try to force a national church which the English king Henry VIII had done when he invented the Church of England and made himself protector and supreme head.

Grievances to the freedoms of speech, to assemble, and to petition the government refer back to in the Declaration of Independence's listing of grievances: "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world ..."

So the First Amendment also has nothing to do with secular or not. It has to do with liberty, freedom, and unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution was born into a Judeo-Christian society, with Judeo-Christian influences and authors. It's all over our nation's buildings and landscape. Calling it secular is highly misleading, approaching idiocy. It's a document of governance by and for Christian people.

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