CHRIST-MAS DAY, 2008

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.

What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.

A man named John was sent from God,
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.

He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice
nor by a man's decision but of God.

And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father's only Son,
full of grace and truth.

John testified to him and cried out, saying,
"This was he of whom I said,
The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me."

From his fullness we have all received,
grace in place of grace,
because while the law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God,
who is at the Father's side,
has revealed him.

John I:1-18

ANIMUS TOWARD RELIGION

Guest column by Glenn Neal, retired-lawyer-turned-writer

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his God;… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." —Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association.

The United States Supreme Court likes to claim the Constitution built a "wall of separation between Church and State." That is patently false. It is the Supreme Court that erected the wall of separation as we know it today.

In 1947, the Court in Everson v. Board of Education declared, "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another."

But that is the Court's interpretation, not the history of America.

Joseph Story, whose Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) is still considered the standard treatise on the subject, wrote,

Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, [sic] the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national counsils, [sic] without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.

The guarantee of freedom of religion in the First Amendment did not promise freedom from religion. President John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

By the year 1702, all thirteen American colonies had some form of state-supported religion. Support varied from tax benefits to religious organizations to requirements to restrict voting or serve in the legislature.

Imagine the turmoil if the federal government had chosen the Anglican faith established in Virginia and applied it nationwide—-to the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to the Puritans in New England and to the Baptists and Jews wherever they may be found.

Although Delaware quit government support for religion as early as 1792, some states continued state support for religion and/or restrictions on anyone but Protestants holding public office until after the American Civil War. The last states to cease all government support for religion were Maryland (1867), South Carolina (1868), North Carolina (1875), and New Hampshire (1877).

Maryland's law requiring that one must believe in God to hold public office was not overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court until 1961.

It should be obvious to everyone but the Supreme Court that the Constitution did not bar establishing a religion. It just prohibited the federal government from establishing a national religion. The Supreme Court of the United States, in direct violation of the First Amendment, is prohibiting the free exercise of one's religion in any public events where there is state or federal government involvement.

Religious observations are deeply imbedded in our laws: religious holidays, opening sessions of Congress and other public functions with prayer, the Declaration of Independence, which refers to the "protection of divine Providence," the swearing of oaths on the Bible, and in other ways too numerous to mention.

Why do we let a few atheists, the ACLU and the United States Supreme Court dictate how and where we worship our God?