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[–] Joe_McCarthy 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

I don't favor imposing religion, necessarily, but it is worth noting that the language you're quoting in the First Amendment originally had a very different meaning from what you're ascribing to it. Most US states at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted had state established religions or in Virginia's case had just stopped having such. The First Amendment ONLY barred a national church because the US was too religiously diverse to allow for one. One couldn't impose a national church on a country with Anglicans in the South and New York and Puritan descended Congregationalists in New England. It would have flatly led to civil war. But this strong religious dimension indicates just how secular the US wasn't. Even Franklin, who wasn't a Christian, praised the US as one could travel far and wide and not find an infidel in this country.

Now I realize the First Amendment has come to evolve into something along the lines of what you prefer due to relatively recent court rulings and the incorporation doctrine, and I don't even necessarily oppose that, but I do dislike modern secularists backdating their beliefs onto early Americans. It does violence to history and American culture.