1. gregladen
  2. So, the US Constitution protects us from religious yahooism. But what about the states'?

So, the US Constitution protects us from religious yahooism. But what about the states'?

By gregladen on June 9, 2010.

The Constitution of the United States makes no mention of God and only two references to religion. The first reference is in the body: Article VI "[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." The second reference is the first line of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." The state constitutions are far less restrained. While looking for voting rights in the state constitutions, I began to collect some interesting trivia from the freedom of religion clauses. The topic was interesting enough that I went back and collected the freedom of religion clauses from all fifty of the state constitutions (all fifty do include it in their enumeration of rights). This task was made easier by stumbling across Know Your Rights!, a site by Ken Lombardi where he has gathered all of the states' bills of rights.

..... Continue reading "Religion in the states" by John McKay.

Tags
Uncategorized

More like this

Don't Screw with T.J.
DaveScot, crank extraordinaire at Uncommon Descent, has made the mistake of talking about Thomas Jefferson now that there is UVa representation on the Scienceblogs. He makes the argument that because the constitution only dealt with federal separation of church and state (before the…
Commonly Heard Arguments Against Separation of Church and State
Continuing the theme from the last essay, we often hear this argument - "Separation of church and state isn't in the constitution". It's a rather silly argument, but it's very popular. Some people really do look at the first amendment and think, "Gee, those words really aren't in there. I guess…
One last Fourth of July thought: Are we a "Christian" nation?
Besides our current President, the other factor that has done perhaps the most to drive me from the Republican Party over the last decade has been its falling under the sway of Christian fundamentalists who want to impose their view of morality, religion, and Christianity on the nation as law. Of…
STACLU on Judging from the Legislature
Our pals at STACLU are quoting a blog post by a lawyer named Ray Kraft, encouraging Congress to pass legislation defining the terms of the Constitution so that the courts can't. Here's Kraft's suggestion: "But there is a Third Way here - and that is for Congress to debate and define, by legislation…