By Selwyn Duke
We may argue about what authors meant to say through works they’ve written, but we don’t argue about whether they meant what they meant. So it’s rather interesting that the men who put the First Amendment in the Constitution opened the inaugural Congress, in 1789, with Christian prayers. This tradition continued (and does to this day), with the prayers remaining exclusively Christian for as long as the Founding generation endured and beyond.
Oddly, it never occurred to these men who gave us the Establishment Clause that government involvement in religion could be a violation of it; we’d have to wait more than 150 years for that great revelation to be delivered by epiphanic, black-robed lawyers who, somehow, apparently knew more about the Constitution than the giants who actually wrote it. Funny that.
As for the Founders’ vision, question: Why didn’t they open one of the early congresses, or some other government affair in the nascent United States, with a prayer to King George III?
“Because he’s not only just a man, but the monarch against whom they rebelled!” is the answer. “That’s a silly question!”
Alright, but would showing such reverence to America’s then-mortal enemy have been any sillier than insisting that a representation of God’s enemy, Satan, must accompany a Nativity at a state capitol at Christmastime?
Read the rest here.
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