BILL OF RIGHTS DAY & THE SEASON OF LAWSUITS By Bill Federer

Just the threat of a lawsuit caused Seattle's Sea-Tac International Airport to remove all its Christmas trees, thus beginning the Season of Lawsuits.(1)

This, right before "Bill of Rights Day," observed on December 15th, which is the day in 1791 when three-quarters of the new States ratified the First Ten Amendments, causing them to go into effect.

At the 150th anniversary of their ratification, in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed December 15th as "Bill of Rights Day."(2)

"The Father of the Bill of Rights" was George Mason.(3) Mason was a wealthy Virginia landowner who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776, from which Jefferson drew upon for the Declaration of Independence. Mason also wrote Virginia's first State Constitution, adopted on June 29, 1779.(4)

In 1787, George Mason was one of 55 men who wrote the U.S. Constitution, being one of the five most frequent speakers at the Constitutional Convention, but he refused to sign it because there were no specific limits on the power of the new Federal Government.

George Mason's anti-federalist campaign, supported by Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, worked against the ratification of the Constitution, and caused a breach in Mason's friendship with federalist George Washington.(5)

In 1788, Mason drew up his "Master Draft of the Bill of Rights," listing 20 suggested Amendments to limit the new Constitution's power. These were used at the ratifying conventions of New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island, and by Elbridge Gerry and James Madison in the first session of Congress. It is primarily due to George Mason's efforts that Congress passed "The Bill of Rights"- the First Ten Amendments.(6)

The last item in George Mason's "Master Draft of the Bill of Rights" resulted in the First Amendment. It stated:

"20. That Religion or the Duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by Reason and Conviction, not by Force or violence, and therefore all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable Right to the free Exercise of Religion according to the Dictates of Conscience, and that no particular religious Sect or Society of Christians ought to be favored or established by Law in preference to others."(7)

It is clear that the purpose of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, according to George Mason, "The Father of the Bill of Rights," was simply that "no particular religious Sect or Society of Christians ought to be favored or established by Law in preference to others."

This is consistent with Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison, who introduced the First Amendment in the first Congress.

Justice Story, who founded the Harvard Law School, wrote in his Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833, Book III:

"CH. XLIV, 727, Section 1868: Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation."(8)

"CH. XLIV, 728, Section 1871: The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects..."(8)

In his "Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 1840, Justice Story wrote:

"We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution)..."(9)

As water is purer the closer you get to the source, one can see an example of what early States thought just eight years after the Bill of Rights were ratified in Maryland's Supreme Court case of Runkel v. Winemiller, 1799:

"Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty."(10)

Though considered narrow by today's standards, these views were very generous and progressive for their time, as prior to the Revolution, many States were like the countries of Europe, where one denomination was established in preference to others. (ie. Anglican Church in Virginia, Congregationalist Church in Connecticut, etc.)

It seems ironic as Bill of Rights Day is being observed this Christmas season, that the views of "Father of the Bill of Rights" should be subject to lawsuits by the ACLU and activist judges, who seemed to be on a grinch jihad to purge the country of its Judeo-Christian heritage. ___

William J. Federer is author of a new book, THE ORIGINAL 13 - A Documentary History of Religion in America's First Thirteen States. http://www.AmericanMinute.com