by Thomas E. Brewton
The View from 1776
It’s a pity that the Bill of Rights didn’t incorporate language found in many of the contemporary state constitutions.
Many of the state constitutions, between the time of the Articles of Confederation and our 1787 Constitution, contained clauses similar to Delaware’s, granting freedom of worship “…unless under color of religion, any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or safety of society.”
Were such language in the First Amendment, vast numbers of vexatious problems could have been avoided. For instance, the practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1940s of employing sound trucks to blare out messages to Catholics on their way to Easter Sunday mass, declaring that the Roman Catholic Church is the"great whore of Babylon” and that Catholics are all damned to hell. The result in some cases was civil disturbance requiring police to prevent mayhem. It was such cases that resulted in the Supreme Court’s present-day doctrines of “separation of church and state,” under the ACLU construction of free speech as inclusive of any sort of conduct, no matter how offensive to the majority of people.
Provisions against disturbing the peace, happiness, or safety of society would also have enabled authorities in the early decades of the 20th century to clamp down on provocateurs advocating the atheistic, materialistic, and anti-Constitutional religion of socialism, as well as dealing today with Islamic Imams who preach hatred and death to non-Muslim American citizens.
With regard to my categorization of socialism as a materialistic religion, see Socialism: Our Unconstitutionally Established National Religion.
For more information on this important series dealing with the intents of our Founding Fathers, please read: Part One and Part Two
About the author:
Thomas E. Brewton, who maintains the blog, The View from 1776, had the great good fortune in the middle 1950s at Louisiana State University to study under two of the 20th century's great minds: Eric Voegelin in political science, and Walter Berns in Constitutional law. These two professors opened the door of education to a glimpse of Western civilization and of American political and social thought as they had been before socialism was unconstitutionally established as the official national religion of the United States in 1933.
The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787.