Dear Editor:
The May 10 commentary by Joseph Perkins abuses the Constitution by suggesting it needs clarification in regard to religion.
No clarification is needed to the only religion commandment from the Founding Fathers--those men who were actually a part of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States" (Article 6). In other words, an American atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim can be President.
Perkins ignored the "no religious test" words and emphasized words dating the Constitution as if commonplace use of the Gregorian calendar is a profession of Christian faith.
As any early American history scholar knows, Benjamin Franklin was a deist (like Thomas Paine). George Washington was a freemason who, as Pennsylvania Episcopal Bishop William White declared, never (1) kneeled, (2) took communion, or (3) claimed to be "a believer in the Christian revelation" (Memoir of William White, Bird Wilson, 189-197). James Madison was not a communicant either. Thomas Jefferson was a deist and a unitarian (like John Adams); but, neither were at the 1787 Convention.
No one denies their belief in "God." The essence of the "no religious test" commandment is prohibition of governmental force in regard to belief. The Founding Fathers did not create a theocracy. Perkins ignored Madison: "Strongly guarded ... is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States" (William and Mary Quarterly, 3:555).
The First Congress added the second religion commandment: "no law respecting an establishment of religion." Public Law 396 (the 1954 "under God" law) violates the spirit and the wording of the Constitution: "no law" means no law. The Constitution guarantees freedom from religion established by law or government at any level.
Gene Garman
Copyright 2003 Gene Garman