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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in his first remarks after being elected Wednesday afternoon, told Members of Congress that “Scripture” and “the Bible” are clear that they have been “ordained” by God.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
That’s really more a bar on state religion, that again doesn’t really prevent our new speaker from say proposing a bill that donates Federal funds to his favorite church, so long as the government isn’t in control of said church.
That would be news to Madison, the man who wrote it. He specifically wrote it to stop a religious funding policy in Maryland. As he pointed out funding would have to pick and choose which religions to fund
It would also be news to Jefferson- his letter to the Danbury Baptists highlights that states like Mass and CT established state religions under the confederation rules, which put Baptists in CT in the role of a religious minority, required to pay taxes to the Congregational Church. In colonial times it was the established religion, a state of affairs that would continue until it was ‘disestablished’ as the state religion via a state constitutional amendment in 1818.