I was invited to join some friends for dinner tonight at a local steak house called Taste of Texas. I was originally just going to hand off a cd and head on home for whatever was being cooked tonight. They invited me to come the night before and I said yes.

I've never been to a restaurant like that. Not even Steak N Ale had that level of class. It was close, but nothing like this. Everyone there was incredibly nice. As I was a first time visitor and being with whom I was with, I had to order steak. (This being one of the top steak houses in Texas.) I've eaten at Outback and Steak N Ale, but this restaurant is about two classes above that. The Texan decor and ranch house feel make for, at least for me, a relaxing atmosphere and a great experience. They have a bunch of historical items from Texas history lining the walls.

They had a huge salad bar and I had sweet potato fries with my steak. Four of us had our steaks come out a bit too pink and the manager for the evening came out to check with us to make sure everything was done right. They brought out the desert platter and I had planned what I ate, so that I could order a desert. The desserts were just as varied and wonderful as the rest of the menu. And most definitely Texas-sized. The chocolate cake the dad ordered was HUGE. Probably close to ten inches tall about about 4 inches thick without the icing. lol.

I will be forever grateful to my friends for inviting me along to dinner. It was a great restaurant with even better company. I had a fabulous time.

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The First Amendment and the Bible

 

 

            In today’s society, a large percentage of American’s call themselves Christians. Reading the Bible, prayer, and praise should all be parts of a Christian life.  If you go throughout a city you can see signs for various denominations on the streets, people wearing religious symbols on their clothing. Yet religious freedoms are being brought up in courts across the country, public schools no longer pray over the intercom, “Under God” has been challenged, and Bible monuments are being removed from public venues.

            These kinds of cases have all come up before the court system under the belief that it violates the “separation of church and state” and therefore violates the First Amendment.  The First Amendment states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. The intent of the First Amendment has changed over the years. From the Founders’ original intent of preventing a national religion to a statement that says the government should have nothing to do with religion under any circumstances.

            America was founded by Godly men who held Godly principles. The original settlers came over from England and Europe to escape countries that had a national religion and would not tolerate any other differing forms of worship. Our Founding Fathers came together and wrote a Constitution that would guarantee certain inalienable rights; rights that no government could take away. When the Framers of the Constitution wrote it, they realized that they could not fit everything into one document. They wrote the Bill of Rights and made provisions for amendments to be added in the future, so that when situations arose the founding document of American government could be altered.

            When the Bill of Rights was first proposed, what we came to know as the First Amendment was actually third on the ballot. The first two were defeated because many thought them unfair. In the early 1990’s what had been the Second Amendment when the Bill of Rights was first proposed, was brought back up and passed.  It took two years for enough of the States to ratify the Bill of Rights. Some of the States that did not originally ratify the Amendments waited until the 150^th anniversary of the Bill of Right’s ratification to ratify the documents.

            The Founders wanted to make certain that the federal government could not and would not impose one system of religion on the entire United States of America. The First Amendment was their guarantee of that. Leaving the power of choosing a religion in the States hands, the young government did not intend for America to step away from its religious foundations.  The States choose not to set up state-wide religions, but in many of their constitutions they made provisions that supported and encouraged religious activities and teaching.

            George Washington told Delaware Indian Chiefs “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ” (Barton 85). He told that to the Chiefs when they brought three of their youth to be educated in American schools. A manifesto authored by Samuel Adams for the Continental Congress speaks of appealing to God for the justness of their actions. Each of our Founding Fathers had some belief or at least respected the belief that God exists and should play a part in both government and daily life.

            The First Amendment was their way of ensuring that religious freedoms would be protected for the generations to come.  Over the years, as America changed, the interpretation of the First Amendment changed. It went from intending to keep the federal government from setting a national religion in place, to bringing into play a phrase that would set the tone for the second half of the twentieth century.

            “Separation of church and state,” has become the phrase that people use to remove God from the public view. The phrase cannot be found within the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It was something that Thomas Jefferson used in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State (Barton 45).” It was his way of reassuring that no federal system of religion would be put in place.

            That phrase has become the basis of many court cases over the last sixty years. In the 1940’s, the Everson case took the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment and paired them together. That meant that the Court had reversed the fact that the First Amendment applied only to the federal government and that the Court had the power to restrict personal, public, and governmental religious activities.

            Another case in the 1940’s struck down voluntary religious activities, something that the Founders never intended. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his plan of education for Virginia, “[I]n my catalogue, considering ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man, I had placed them in that sequence (Barton 152).” Noah Webster wrote “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed (Barton 153).”  These and other writings by the Founders show that they intended to have both secular and religious instruction in the public schools.

            The 1960’s Engel case questioned the viability of prayer in public schools. People said that the problem was that is was school enforced and school approved prayers. The Court’s decision showed otherwise. “[P]rayer in the public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State (Barton 156).” It showed that it was not the fact it was school led, but that it was the presence of prayer in public schools that caused the judgment.

            Since school led prayers were no longer an option, many students turned to student led prayers as an alternative. The coupling of the First and Fourteenth Amendments allowed the courts to put heavy restrictions on even student led prayer. In Texas, a girl prayed over a public intercom before a football game and someone took the issue to court. The case worked its way up to the Supreme Court and it was determined that she could not pray over a public intercom because it violated “separation of Church and State.” Though both Congress and the Court are opened by prayer.

            Also in the 1960’s a case came before the Court that challenged the voluntary use of the Scriptures by students.  Facts presented at the District level were either ignored or overlooked and the Supreme Court paved the way for the removal of the Scriptures from the public schools. America’s founders never intended that the Bible be taken out of the public school system. Patrick Henry said that, “[The Bible] is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed (Barton 163).” Henry Laurens, President of Continental Congress, said that “[T]he Bible…. [is] a necessary part of a polite education (Barton 163).”

            In the1980’s a display of the Ten Commandments on the walls of public schools was challenged. The Court said that the prime reason for the display was religious in nature rather than educational. Yet there are depictions of the Ten Commandments in two different locations within the Supreme Court. The Court also said that the Ten Commandments would have the effect of people reading and meditating on those principles.

 The Founding Fathers would not have agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision. “If “Thou shalt not covet” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free (Barton 172)” was a statement made by John Adams. Robert Winthrop, a Speaker of the U.S. House, said “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet (Barton 173).”

            Just in the last few years there have been challenges to monuments that have stood in court houses across the country. Judge Roy Moore lost his case to keep a stone monument of the Ten Commandments in his Alabama courthouse. The monument was removed against public opinion. In Houston, Texas the monument to the founder of the Star of Hope mission was challenged and removed because it held a Bible as a part of the monument.

            The Ten Commandments still stand in the Supreme Court. They are part of a set of laws that though Judeo-Christian in origin should be followed by all mankind. When prayer and the Bible were removed from public schools, America’s education system began to degrade. Now many students thrive in private and home schools rather than in the public education system. All of these cases have come about through the “separation of Church and State” clause. Having a religious display on public or governmental grounds has been ruled unconstitutional because of the current interpretation of the first amendment.

            In today’s society there is almost no mention of God in public other than the church signs that you see on the streets. The First Amendment has been used to try to confine religious activities to private grounds. After September 11^th, a group of Congressmen and women sang “God Bless America” on the steps in Washington D.C.. It took a national disaster unlike anything America had ever seen to push her back towards her Godly roots. The Founding Fathers clearly never intended on putting a wall between religion in everyday life, but through the First Amendment and a handful of people that is exactly what has happened. Even the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto are under fire. America was founded by Godly men and on Godly principles. With the way the country is going now, how long will it be before America’s heritage is buried completely?

Works Cited

Barton, David. Original Intent: The Courts, The Constitution, and Religion. 3^rd ed.  Aledo: WallBuilder Press, 2000.