“Religious freedom is meant to be a shield to protect, not a sword to harm,” says Rabbi Ruttenberg, scholar-in-residence for the National Council of Jewish Women. “Abortion bans absolutely impose one theology onto the nation, on people who hold other theologies and on people who are not religious, in a way that is deeply problematic.”
In 1802, Thomas Jefferson, wrote: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
[Excerpts]
THE FIRST AMENDMENT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE” OR A “WALL OF SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.” WHERE DID THIS IDEA COME FROM? IS IT REALLY PART OF THE LAW?
Although the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the First Amendment, the establishment clause was intended to separate church from state. When the First Amendment was adopted in 1791, the establishment clause applied only to the federal government, prohibiting the federal government from any involvement in religion.
In the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the establishment clause to the states through the 14th Amendment. Today, the establishment clause prohibits all levels of government from either advancing or inhibiting religion.
The establishment clause separates church from state, but not religion from politics or public life. Individual citizens are free to bring their religious convictions into the public arena. But the government is prohibited from favoring one religious view over another or even favoring religion over non-religion.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that without separating church from state, there could be no real religious freedom.
The first use of the “wall of separation” metaphor was by Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in 1635. He said an authentic Christian church would be possible only if there was “a wall or hedge of separation” between the “wilderness of the world” and “the garden of the church.” Any government involvement in the church, he believed, corrupts the church.
Then in 1802, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, wrote: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The Supreme Court has cited Jefferson’s letter in key cases, beginning with a polygamy case in the 19th century. In the 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education, the Court cited a direct link between Jefferson’s “wall of separation” concept and the First Amendment’s establishment clause. [End Excerpt]
[Excerpts]
THE FIRST AMENDMENT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE” OR A “WALL OF SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.” WHERE DID THIS IDEA COME FROM? IS IT REALLY PART OF THE LAW?
Although the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the First Amendment, the establishment clause was intended to separate church from state. When the First Amendment was adopted in 1791, the establishment clause applied only to the federal government, prohibiting the federal government from any involvement in religion.
In the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the establishment clause to the states through the 14th Amendment. Today, the establishment clause prohibits all levels of government from either advancing or inhibiting religion.
The establishment clause separates church from state, but not religion from politics or public life. Individual citizens are free to bring their religious convictions into the public arena. But the government is prohibited from favoring one religious view over another or even favoring religion over non-religion.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that without separating church from state, there could be no real religious freedom.
The first use of the “wall of separation” metaphor was by Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in 1635. He said an authentic Christian church would be possible only if there was “a wall or hedge of separation” between the “wilderness of the world” and “the garden of the church.” Any government involvement in the church, he believed, corrupts the church.
Then in 1802, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, wrote: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The Supreme Court has cited Jefferson’s letter in key cases, beginning with a polygamy case in the 19th century. In the 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education, the Court cited a direct link between Jefferson’s “wall of separation” concept and the First Amendment’s establishment clause. [End Excerpt]
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/has-the-u-s-supreme-court-defined-religion/
HAS THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DEFINED “RELIGION?”
[Excerpts]
Although it has attempted to create standards to differentiate religious beliefs and actions from similar nonreligious beliefs, the Supreme Court has never articulated a formal definition for religion. Given the diversity of Americans’ religious experience since the Constitution was created, a single comprehensive definition has proved elusive.
In 1890, the Supreme Court in Davis v. Beason expressed religion in traditional theistic terms: “[T]he term ‘religion’ has reference to one’s views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will.”
In the 1960s, the Court expanded its view of religion. In its 1961 decision Torcaso v. Watkins, the Court stated that the establishment clause prevents government from aiding “those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” In a footnote, the Court clarified that this principle extended to “religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God … Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.”
In its 1965 ruling United States v. Seeger, the Court sought to resolve disagreement between federal circuit courts over interpretation of the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1948. The case involved denial of conscientious objector status to individuals who based their objections to war on sources other than a supreme being, as specifically required by the statute. The Court interpreted the statute as questioning “[w]hether a given belief that is sincere and meaningful occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God of one who clearly qualifies for the exemption. Where such beliefs have parallel positions in the lives of their respective holders we cannot say that one is ‘in relation to a Supreme Being’ and the other is not.”
Welsh v. United States represented another conscientious-objector case under the same statute. The Court in this 1970 decision went one step further and essentially merged religion with deeply and sincerely held moral and ethical beliefs. The Court suggested individuals could be denied exemption only if “those beliefs are not deeply held and those whose objection to war does not rest at all upon moral, ethical, or religious principle but instead rests solely upon consideration of policy, pragmatism, or expediency.”
Following the expansive view of religion expressed in Seeger and Welsh, the Court in its 1972 ruling involving the Amish and compulsory school attendance suggested a shift back, to a more exclusive definition. The majority opinion in Wisconsin v. Yoder indicated that the free-exercise clause applied only to “a ‘religious’ belief or practice,” and “the very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests.”
The Court in its 1981 decision Thomas v. Review Board further expressed its reluctance to protect philosophical values. The Indiana Supreme Court had ruled that a decision by a Jehovah’s Witness to quit his job after he was transferred to a weapons-making facility was a “personal philosophical choice rather than a religious choice” and did not “rise to the level of a first amendment claim.” In overturning the Indiana decision, Chief Justice Warren Burger cautiously stated, “[o]nly beliefs rooted in religion are given special protection to the exercise of religion.” The Court found the worker’s actions to be motivated by his religious beliefs.
Few have been satisfied by the Court’s attempts to define religion. Many of the Court’s definitions use the word “religion” to describe religion itself. In other cases, the Court’s explanations seem to provide little useful guidance. [End Excerpts]
Is the abortion debate a philosophical, religious, or individual rights issue? How do you make the distinction between philosophy and religion? There is a difference between religion and philosophy. Religion is composed of a set of morals, rules, principles, and ethics that serve as a guide to one's way of living. It is not necessarily God or faith dependent. Philosophy does not seek a guide to live by. It seeks to understand truth through investigative epistemology, the study of nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. Epistemology has greek origins, episteme (knowledge) and logos (reason).
Chistian Science Monitor -Bruinius and Gass. [Excerpts]
When the Supreme Court in June overturned the constitutional right to abortion… its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health did not mention the word “religion” once. Rather, it dismantled the unenumerated right to privacy that had undergirded the right to abortion for almost 50 years and returned the legal question of abortion to each individual state.
Still, for decades, those within the anti-abortion movement have been animated by the belief that life begins at the moment of conception, making abortion, in their view, both a sin and a crime. A central tenet of Roman Catholic teaching and a view held by a majority of evangelical Protestants, this belief has informed the political positions of many religious conservatives who dominate the Republican Party.
In Kentucky, a state judge has blocked the state’s “trigger law” banning abortion. Part of the judge’s reasoning included an understanding of religious freedom in the Kentucky Constitution and the apparent theological underpinnings of the ban. Using the term “unborn human beings” in the law, he said, constituted “theocratic-based policymaking.”
“By taking this approach, the bans fail to account for the diverse religious views of many Kentuckians whose faith leads them to take very different views of when life begins,” wrote Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mitch Perry. The trigger ban violates the state’s constitution “by impermissibly establishing a distinctly Christian doctrine of the beginning of life, and by unduly interfering with the free exercise of other religions that do not share that belief.”
“Religious freedom is meant to be a shield to protect, not a sword to harm,” says Rabbi Ruttenberg, scholar-in-residence for the National Council of Jewish Women. “Abortion bans absolutely impose one theology onto the nation, on people who hold other theologies and on people who are not religious, in a way that is deeply problematic.”
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol23/iss2/6/
William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice
ABSTRACT
The status of abortion as murder, and therefore amenable to governmental intervention and criminalization, has been asserted by those favoring limits on abortion. Opponents claim a superior right of privacy and/or equality exists under the Constitution, vesting in a woman the right to decide activities and actions that affect her physical corpus. The claimed interest of a State to protect the fetus is impliedly based on the concept of “morality” or “natural law,” specifically on the premise that feticide is violative of the basic code of conduct of societal norms. To my knowledge, until now, this is the first investigation undertaken to determine whether in fact indicators of “natural law” or the moral code support this claim from a legal perspective.
To investigate whether there is any “moral” basis to support the State’s claim and the Supreme Court’s recent rulings, I first examined the earliest and most important social codes that have governed the conduct of “man” since the beginnings of civilization, finding that none regard feticide within forty days of gestation as murder. I next investigated international views on abortion to determine if consensus on abortion regulations existed, (and which would be expected if a collective “moral code” existed) and found none, either in timing of allowable abortion on demand or exceptions to any restrictions.
I also demonstrate that the Catholic position on legitimacy of killing a life form (based on the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue) is vastly different than, say, the Jewish view, and that this appears to be a driving force behind the courts’ positions. As such, invidious, idiosyncratic religious influences are likely driving abortion regulations. Therefore suggest the Freedom of Religion Clause specifically bars legal intervention into practice, whether legislative or by judicial fiat.
In sum, this Article demonstrates that abortion or feticide is not considered either murder (or even killing another human) by many traditions, religious or moral, and concludes that regulating abortion as sin, rather than crime, should be left to religions’ determination rather than governmental intervention. As such, I suggest that the most compelling argument then to support the claim of a woman’s right to determine whether or not to abort would be on the basis of the First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Religion.
[End Abstract]
One can conclude that the religious right of the Republican party are being un-American by imposing their religious belief into the laws of the land. Un-American means they are violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Religion.