Articles
Protecting the First Amendment from Errors of Interpretation
By Chase Hulderman
A Student Statesmanship Institute alumnus who recently began his studies at Calvin College after
serving as an intern and staff member for the Michigan House of Representatives.
The U.S. Constitution is a mighty document. It has carefully set apart the three branches of government,
vested them with their specific powers, and detailed the extent of their authority. The Bill of Rights
is built on this foundation. The First Amendment gives us essential freedoms our forefathers could have
only dreamed of back in Europe.
Unfortunately, the precious words of the First Amendment, so carefully penned by our founders, have become
vulnerable and readily abandoned by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Two recent vacancies on the court
shed a spotlight on some modern jurists and their errors of interpretation.
The same freedoms that once protected the citizens of the United States from a national religion and
endorsement of a particular sect, now encourage secularism and limit the practice of many other beliefs.
In the last 30 years political movements and landmark court decisions have misconstrued these freedoms.
Words are only as good as what they are interpreted to mean. Apathy and ignorance of our civil duties have
begun to facilitate a drift from the purposes of our forefathers. The First Amendment is especially moving
to me and necessitates a sense of duty that, for the most part, is lost among today's citizens.
The First Amendment contains three essential freedoms: the freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the
freedom to peaceably assemble. A common misconception is that these rights are explicitly granted to us.
The language only states "Congress shall make no law." The wording is more prohibitory than benevolent.
The first section of the First Amendment is known as the separation of church and state, but this is not
the official wording. The implications of this phrase suggest a meaning totally different than the actual
text. In 1801, a Baptist church in Danbury, Connecticut wrote to President Thomas Jefferson asking him to
declare a day of thanksgiving like his predecessors had done. Jefferson said he could not grant their
request believing that such a proclamation would violate what he termed the "wall of separation between
church and state," that the First Amendment provided.
These pivotal words were immortalized by the Supreme Court in the decision of Reynolds v United States
(1879) and the quoting of this decision in Everson v Board of Education (1947). The late Justice William
Rehnquist is among those who have criticized this view, pointing out that Jefferson's words were written
in a short note of courtesy that came 14 years after the amendments were approved by Congress. In his
dissenting opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), Rehnquist said: "It is impossible to build sound
constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history, but unfortunately the
Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years..."
We also saw a 200-year tradition destroyed when a moment of silence, for meditation and prayer in schools,
was declared unconstitutional in the Wallace case. In the same way, the teaching of creation science side
by side with evolutionary science was declared unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard because creation
science was "too favorable to Christianity."
The nation has begun to violate its own mantra, in the endorsement of atheism, by its desperate attempts
to abide by the few words written by a man who had no part in writing the First Amendment. The exchange
of eternal ideas for modern meanings has successfully drowned the intent of much that our founders fought
to create. Our jurists should remember the nation's roots. As it says in Isaiah 1:26 it is time to "restore
our judges as in the days of old, and our counselors as at the beginning." There needs to be a sense of
urgency to grasp the gravity of these liberties before they are lost.
The First Amendment calls us to not only cherish our freedoms, but to remember them and live in constant
thankfulness for the blessings that liberty allows us - that through our reverence, the words of the
preamble might reverberate within us:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The First Amendment granted our forefathers unprecedented religious freedoms. It also brought an obligation - to understand and impart the knowledge of these rights so we might ensure their vitality for generations to come.
