Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Freedom of religion is the first right recognized in the opening sentence of the Bill of Rights, the ten Articles ratified as Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in 1791.
Freedom of religion opens the first sentence of the First Amendment. Why would that be?
In a free country, people honor religion as an individual right derived from what the Founders referred to as "the Creator." Government has no place in the personal faith choices of the people. The issue is between the individual and God.
The violations of the First Amendment that are transpiring recently, with undercover FBI agents infiltrating Catholic Latin masses in search of "domestic terrorists," and with violent anti-Semitism running rampant throughout our educational institutions, would have enraged our nation's founders.
When I was growing up in a Sunday Mass-going Catholic household, my father would not stand for any joking or disparagement of other religions. If he caught us giggling about Jewish yamulkes, Buddhist monks with shaved heads and orange togas, or any other visible feature of another faith, he would shut us down instantly. Dad would reiterate the fact that "other people's religions are as important to them as ours is to us." We learned to be respectful of different beliefs. By extension, we learned to be respectful of other people, period.
Despite the current national chaos, research shows that America remains a religious nation. If we can hold fast to our values, we may continue to remain that way. I certainly hope so. As the Founders knew, freedom of religion is the key to a free country.
