In 1786 Thomas Jefferson's bill on religious freedom was passed in Virginia. James Madison reported that some legislators wanted to insert the words "'Jesus Christ.' He and the legislature rejected it because it would have worked for "a restriction of the liberty defined in the bill to those professing his religion only. Jefferson saw rejection of the restrictive bill to be "proof" that the legislature "mean to comprehend within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."
After the passage Maryland's Luther Martin spoke for a few delegates who were "so unfashionable as to think. . . that in a Christian country, it would be at least decent to hold our some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity and paganism." As the states ratified the Constitution with its Article VI against religious tests for office, here and there someone would speak up fearing, in one celebrated instance, that the Constitution would be an invitation to Jews and Catholics to come to the United States,, and be a threat to its survival. Another feared that "a Turk, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and what is worse than all, a Universalist, may be President of the United States." Such advocates always lost badly, and we are stuck with the Constitution the founders gave us. It is godless mentioning only that it was passed "in the Year of Our Lord. . . "
Now, Jefferson and Madison were not all of the nation, nor was Virginia, but they could have tried to legislate what Governor Huckabee called for, "God's Constitution," just as Governor Romney ruled out the "infidel," the non-believer.
Those two apparently genial and generous candidates were asking for something unConstitutional and "unAmerican;" one hopes they've forgotten the constituencies they were trying to form and to which they appealed, and returned to our Constitution a republic. The founders knew that governments in Europe and nine of the thirteen colonies had tried to follow "Cod's Constitution" or to rule out the religiously unacceptable, and centuries of bloodshed followed, without compensatory stories of virtue. Those who think religions must have government support, favor, or privilege, might do well to look at the empty cathedrals, churches, and chapels, emptied in part because of the aggression and later religiously thoughtless ethos.
There is a rather simple line running through modern polities: where there is government imposition or involvement, as in much of "Islamdom," religions become authoritarian, persecutory, or slovenly. Where government is generally neutral, as in much of "Christendom," religions, while they may become competitive, leave no dead bodies and fewer sleepy souls.
Governor Romney did well, I thought, in changing the subject when asked about his Mormonism, which should not be an issue in 2008. Had he stopped there he would have remained in the American Constitutional tradition. He didn't, at least for that day.
Governor Huckabee did not change the subject; he brought up the subject, and did not do well. He is influenced by a particular religious movement, at one time called "Reconstructionism," which is quite articulate about its aims: formally to replace anything in constitutional law which does not match their view of God's Constitution, and to unfold an amended and revised "God's Constitution."
Which God? Whose God? What about the God of Mr. Huckabee's choice, details of whose policies as described by the "God's constitution" constituency, are held by few, and even they argue about details.
The Virginians in 1786 had it right, and their colleagues and successors have kept it right. It would be tragic if, in order to gain votes from one constituency or, in the other case, to revise and replace the tradition out of conviction in support of God's Constitution over two centuries of consensus and/or creative contentions were to be rejected.
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