Bryan Fischer
The true meaning of the First Amendment, Part 1
By Bryan Fischer
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
(Note: emphasis is added unless otherwise noted.)
There has been more controversy over the interpretation and application of the First Amendment and its religious liberty clauses than over any other part of the U.S. Constitution. It is crucial for our judiciary and for our entire culture to have a clear and unambiguous understanding of its meaning if we are to find our way through what has become a minefield of conflict and litigation over which public expressions of religious sentiment are permissible and which are not.
What I learned about the sacred text of the Scripture, in my former career as a teaching pastor, applies equally to the text of our nation's supreme legal document: a written work either means what its authors intended it to mean, or it can mean anything at all. In other words, if we abandon the principle that a document means what its writers intended it to mean, that document becomes capable of a dizzying variety of interpretations, many of which will have no connection at all to the author's original plain intent, and may even flatly contradict it.
Our Founding Fathers agreed with the importance of grasping the original intent of the Framers. Said Thomas Jefferson, in a rebuke of a contemporary Supreme Court justice, "On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
The "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, said, "I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution . . . What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense."
Justice James Wilson agreed: "The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."
So it becomes incumbent upon us to ascertain as nearly as possible what the Founding Fathers meant when they carefully crafted the language of the First Amendment, both with respect to the Establishment clause and the Free Exercise clause. Returning to a clear understanding of their intent is the only possible way to chart a navigable path into our future. Laying out a clear and unambiguous understanding of those clauses is the purpose of this next series of columns.
Next week: The meaning of the "Establishment" clause
© Bryan Fischer
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
(Note: emphasis is added unless otherwise noted.)
There has been more controversy over the interpretation and application of the First Amendment and its religious liberty clauses than over any other part of the U.S. Constitution. It is crucial for our judiciary and for our entire culture to have a clear and unambiguous understanding of its meaning if we are to find our way through what has become a minefield of conflict and litigation over which public expressions of religious sentiment are permissible and which are not.
What I learned about the sacred text of the Scripture, in my former career as a teaching pastor, applies equally to the text of our nation's supreme legal document: a written work either means what its authors intended it to mean, or it can mean anything at all. In other words, if we abandon the principle that a document means what its writers intended it to mean, that document becomes capable of a dizzying variety of interpretations, many of which will have no connection at all to the author's original plain intent, and may even flatly contradict it.
Our Founding Fathers agreed with the importance of grasping the original intent of the Framers. Said Thomas Jefferson, in a rebuke of a contemporary Supreme Court justice, "On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
The "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, said, "I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution . . . What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense."
Justice James Wilson agreed: "The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."
So it becomes incumbent upon us to ascertain as nearly as possible what the Founding Fathers meant when they carefully crafted the language of the First Amendment, both with respect to the Establishment clause and the Free Exercise clause. Returning to a clear understanding of their intent is the only possible way to chart a navigable path into our future. Laying out a clear and unambiguous understanding of those clauses is the purpose of this next series of columns.
Next week: The meaning of the "Establishment" clause
© Bryan Fischer
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