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However, your assertion that the intent of the constitutional
guarantee of freedom of religion does not include freedom from
religion is simply not true. An objective study of the historical
context and the actual wording of the relevant passages in the
Constitution both argue the opposite—that the framers were
intent on establishing what Jefferson called a “wall”
between the state and all forms of religion.
An important component of the First Amendment guarantee of
freedom of religion is the right to be left alone, that is, to
be free from intrusive meddling by the government into private
affairs, including personal beliefs about the existence or nonexistence
of God.
The American Revolution, with all its contradictions, was
a massive and progressive advance in mankind’s social and
political development. The revolution had both historical and
ideological roots. We give first place, in the final analysis,
to the objective economic and social contradictions. However,
as dialectical and historical materialists, we recognize that
these objective contradictions can manifest themselves only in
and through the conscious activities and thoughts of people.
The relationship between material base and ideological superstructure
is complex, and we pay the utmost attention to questions of social
consciousness and ideology.
In the struggle to establish their independence, the colonists
were forced to challenge all the bulwarks of the old order, including
the substantial power of the Anglican Church, the established
church of the British ruling classes. Under the British, American
colonists were forced to pay tithes and taxes to support the
state church, even if they opposed its teachings. Opposition
to this requirement was a powerful motivating factor in the struggle
against British rule.
The fight against this tyranny involved not simply replacing
one established church with another, but of challenging the idea
that the state had any role to play in religious affairs. The
most important framers of the US Constitution, such as James
Madison, strongly believed that, as a fundamental democratic
principle, individuals had the right to form their own beliefs,
free from state interference of any kind.
In the 1784 Virginia Assessment Bill for the support of religious
education, the issue was precisely freedom from religion. The
Virginia legislature proposed to levy a tax to support religious
education, but individuals were free to choose which church was
to receive the money. Madison opposed this bill in the strongest
possible terms. He declared that any government support for religion
was a violation of democratic principles and “that equality
which ought to be the basis of every law.”
He continued. “If ‘all men are by nature equally
free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering
into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and
therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural
rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal
title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates
of conscience.’ Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom
to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe
to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those
whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced
us.”
Here it is clear that Madison’s concept of freedom of
religion includes the rights of non-believers as well as the
faithful. As a consequence of Madison’s agitation, the Virginia
legislature passed Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing
Religious Freedom. A few years later Madison helped draft the
First Amendment to the US Constitution.
A review of Jefferson’s writings can leave no doubt that
his struggle for religious freedom was based on his opposition
to all forms of intellectual coercion, including government promotion
of religion. Thus he wrote, “But it does me no injury for
my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
It is true that there has been an ongoing assault on this
basic democratic conception, including such things as the forced
recitation of the “pledge of allegiance.” It should
be noted that the reference to “one nation under God”
in the pledge of allegiance was instituted during the McCarthy
period in 1954.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman asserted
during the 2000 campaign, in an effort to woo votes from religious
conservatives, that the Constitution does not guarantee freedom
from religion. It is an indication of the advanced state of decay
of US bourgeois democracy that this assertion was barely challenged.
However, so firmly embedded is the concept of the separation
of church and state that the Supreme Court, including the present
reactionary gang, has up to now interpreted freedom of religion
to include freedom from religion. It has ruled unconstitutional
the holding of “moments of silence” at the start of
school, or even “voluntary” student led prayers before
the start of high school football games. Of course, the right-wing
majority on the Court, headed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
is basically hostile to the principle of the separation of church
and state, and is doing its best to undermine it.http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/corr-j04.shtml |