Source: http://bjp-tiaj.net/0_TIAJ/0_8_0_Am_I_(Intro_-_Orig_Intent).htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 22:56:40+00:00

Document:
An organization described in subsection (c) . . . shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle . . .
This amendment is a core issue of the investigation. It’s the core issue of this inventory. Christ’s demand to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s" (Matthew 22:21) is paraphrased here as, "Congress [(meaning Caesar)] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Since this is a core issue of the investigation, we’ll not restate here everything that the global covenant says about freedom of religion. Since the freedoms of (a)speech, (b)press, (c)assembly, and (d)petition are all basic property rights under the global covenant, we’ll not pretend here that we haven’t already established the Biblically sound position on these four issues. We believe this quartet of constitutional rights is implicit in the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, and that if we comprehend these two clauses correctly, the other four issues rationally derive therefrom. So we’ll focus exclusively here on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.
When the War for Independence arrived, much of this changed. For example, in 1776 the Virginia general assembly "repealed all laws penalizing heresy, apostasy, and nonconformity, then exempted all dissenters from payment of tithes in support of the established church". 5 Similar changes took place in other colonies. These were not changes that were prompted by some collective desire to eliminate religion or Christianity. These changes were prompted hugely by the recognition that there was an underlying set of principles that were common to the thirteen colonies. These principles were well expressed in the Declaration of Independence with the statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.". 6 This is not a repudiation of the Creator. It is open acknowledgement of the attributes with which He created us. It is totally consistent with the global covenant. It’s also consistent with the Declaration’s intellectual predecessors: some advocates of natural law philosophy and of the compact theory of government in general. 7 This movement towards de-establishing State religions that was instigated in 1776 was a collective acknowledgement by the people of the thirteen colonies that they shared these fundamental God-based beliefs in common. This movement that was alive in 1776 that manifested as these words in the Declaration, was in essence an establishment of a more fundamental religion, a religion that held these essential precepts as foundational. It was therefore the establishment of a secular religion, a religion that claimed to encompass all other religions. It was emphatically not the repudiation of all religions for the purpose of creating a secular society.
Almighty God hath made the mind free, and all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of hour religion, who, being Lord of both body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do . . .
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
The man who had drafted the 16th Article of the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, and who greatly influenced the adoption of the Virginia Statute of Religion Freedom of 1786, was also the man who proposed the 1st Amendment to the united States Constitution. On August 15, 1789, James Madison offered the following as a potential amendment to the House of Representatives: "No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed.". 11 Congressman Benjamin Huntington stood to agree that such an amendment was valuable, but was concerned that "the words might be taken in such latitude as to be extremely hurtful to the cause of religion". Whatever words were used, Huntington wanted the amendment to be clear enough "to secure the rights of conscience, and a free exercise of the rights of religion, but not to patronize those who professed no religion at all". 12 In other words, Huntington wanted the amendment to establish the secular religion, but not the secular lack of religion. — In contrast to Benjamin Huntington, we believe that there is no such thing as "no religion at all". Even those who claim to have "no religion at all" are not utterly devoid of belief, unless they are psychotic or comatose. For anyone to claim they have no religion is essentially the same as claiming that they have no belief system. Without a belief system, people don’t even get up in the morning. They don’t eat, and if breathing were not a function of the autonomic nervous system, they wouldn’t breathe either. So everyone has a religion, even though their god may be little or nothing more than their next meal. So everyone worships God or some god or gods. Otherwise they cannot stay alive and sane at the same time. As long as one is alive, one has a religion, even if that religion violates the laws of nature in profound ways. — The issue that government needs to address is not whether someone professes a religion or not, but whether someone violates rights or not. The secular religion that the framers were in essence attempting to define is nothing more or less than the Bible’s global covenant. Under the global covenant, the only human law that secular social compacts need to be concerned about is that which makes bloodshed illicit, and that which makes violation of secular contracts illicit. 13 Even if it wasn’t stated explicitly that this is what they were doing, it is intuitively obvious that this is what they were doing. In fact, "Constitutional historians are nearly unanimous in their conclusion that the framers of the First Amendment intended to codify the English common law as taught by Sir William Blackstone". 14 Blackstone’s Commentaries are certainly not a perfect exposition of the global covenant, but they are much closer to it than American laws in the early 21st century.
Given the manner in which the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses have been misconstrued since the ratification of the 1st Amendment, Congressman Huntington’s fears about misconstruction were well founded. — "The Framers of the Religion Clauses held that there is a duty to God, which is the core of religion, and that this ultimately reduces to the dictates of conscience. . . . In the eyes of fundamental law as framed in the First Congress, every individual has a duty to God, even if he rejects all traces of metaphysical thinking about a supreme being, and this duty to God is finally rooted in that sense of right and wrong, that awareness of natural law, which, as great thinkers have always maintained, is an objective truth written and waiting to be found in all human hearts, and is common to all nations on the Earth." 15 — So on one hand, the framers were making a sincere and worthy attempt at establishing this secular religion without violating rights. But on the other, they – and their successors in government – lacked rigorous definitions of bloodshed, jural societies, ecclesiastical societies, etc., and such lack led them by a short path to misconstruction of both the global covenant – the secular religion – and the 1st Amendment.
To their discredit, they failed to articulate the lawful subject matter jurisdiction of their new secular government. They may have genuinely believed that "The First Amendment does not select any one group or any one type of religion for preferred treatment." 22. But their actions, and the actions of their descendants, make it clear that they lacked the conceptual tools to make such belief fully functional.
1United States Code Title 26 § 501, URL: https://www.law.cornell.edu/​uscode/​text/​26/​501.
2The Light and the Glory, pp. 197-198.
3"See, e.g., 3 Hening’s Statutes at Large 358 (October 1705, Chapter 30). This law required attendance of services of the established church in Virginia at least once each month. The act extended to all persons save for those exempted by the Toleration Act, 1 William and Mary, Chapter 18 (1689). The law also reenacted the substance of the Statute of 9 & 10 William III, Chapter 32 (1699), which forbade anyone raised in the Christian faith, on pain of certain civil disabilities and criminal punishments, from openly and publicly denying the existence of God or the Holy Trinity, or asserting the existence of more than one God, or denying the truth of the Christian religion, or disclaiming the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments." — This quote is from Principles of Confederacy, endnote #7, p. 562.
4Principles of Confederacy, pp. 528-529.
5See 9 Hening’s Statutes at Large, p. 164 (October 1776, Chapter 2). — The quote is from Principles of Confederacy, pp. 528-529.
6Some people claim that the "Creator" here was not the God of the Judaeo-Christian Bible. They claim this based on the fact that a deist, Thomas Jefferson, penned these words. In fact, the Declaration was approved by the Continental Congress only after two phrases were inserted to let the world know that Congress was speaking specifically of the God of the Judaeo-Christian Bible: (i)"appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions" and (ii)"with a Firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence". These two phrases "Congress insisted upon including, over Jefferson’s strenuous objection, for he was a confirmed ‘enlightened rationalist,’ soon to become privately a Unitarian." — Quote is from The Light and the Glory, p. 307.
7See Principles of Confederacy, pp. 528-529.
8These quotes of both articles appear in Principles of Confederacy, pp. 528-529. — See them at the "Constitution Society", URL: http://www.constitution.org/​bor/​vir_bor.htm.
912 Hening’s Statues at Large, p. 84 (October 1785, Chapter 34). — Jefferson later wrote the following about the legislative debate over this statute: "The bill for establishing religions freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the name ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." — Koch’s Jefferson at p. 47. — The quotes and citations also appear in Principles of Confederacy, endnote #15, p. 563.
10See Principles of Confederacy, pp. 529-530.
11Principles of Confederacy, pp. 533-534.
12Principles of Confederacy, pp. 533-534.
13In contrast to this standard, Rabbinical Judaism has generally divided the 613 mitzvot (laws / commandments) in the Torah (the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible) into "Positive Mitzvot" and "Negative Mitzvot". In other words, Rabbinical Judaism divides the 613 laws into two classes of laws: (1)laws against actions that must be avoided, and (2)laws in favor of actions that must be performed. We take the view that there is a more profound classification of laws. Laws are either actual human law, meaning "Law actually . . . adopted . . . for the government of" human beings by human beings, meaning positive law, or they are not. Positive law is lawfully and morally divisible into (1)laws that pertain to bloodshed, and (2)laws that pertain to contracts. Each of these two basic classes of positive law is rightly divided into two subsidiary classes of "Positive" laws (not to be confused with positive law) and "Negative" laws. For example, the laws against committing bloodshed are Negative, but the laws mandating execution of justice against bloodshed are Positive. Likewise, laws against breaking a contract are Negative, but laws mandating execution of a penalty against contract-breakers are Positive. — For more about the mitzvot, see The Commandments: Sefer Ha-Mitzvoth of Maimonides.
14The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, p. 669, "Prior Restraint", by Patrick M. Garry. — Also see Blackstone’s Commentaries, vol. 1, pp. 39-40 and 245 (Access at Yale’s Avalon Project, URL: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/​subject_menus/​blackstone.asp.).
15This quote is from Principles of Confederacy, pp. 534-535. — In endnote #21, p. 564, Graham recommends comparing his statement to "St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2nd Part of the 1st Part, Question 94, Article 4, which corresponds perfectly with the teachings of Sir William Blackstone on the foundations of jurisprudence.". — Graham’s claim that such truth exists in every human heart is confirmed by Scriptures like Romans 1:18-20: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." (NASB).
16Originally enacted by the Confederation Congress on July 13, 1787.
17Principles of Confederacy, pp. 538-539. — Regarding the funding of public schools, it’s especially interesting to read endnotes #27 and #28 marked on pages 538-539, and appearing on page 566.
18This shows that even as early as the First Congress, officials in the general government were suffering from this syndrome: (1)Identify or misidentify a problem. (2)Create a solution that violates property rights. (3)Continue with this pseudo-solution until the government implodes.
19United States v. Ballard (1944), Justice Douglas’s majority opinion.
20This claim that the "freedom to believe . . . is absolute" while the "freedom to act . . . cannot be" comes originally from Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), and is quoted here in United States v. Ballard (1944). In our opinion, the claim is incorrect for the following reason: When it’s clearly understood (i)that government cannot exist unless some religion is established, and (ii)what religion is lawful as global human law, it’s clear that the freedom to act in any way that doesn’t violate this lawfully established religion is "absolute". In this sense, both the "freedom to believe" and the "freedom to act" are "absolute".
21United States v. Ballard (1944), Justice Douglas’s majority opinion.
22United States v. Ballard (1944), Justice Douglas’s majority opinion.

References: § 501
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.