I'll get back to you and the list on my side of this discussion. 
You are correct Roe v. Wade is not relevant to this discussion. 
My apologies. 

John Philip Adams
Texas 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 11:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Wren Cross at W&M

You are welcome for the history lesson.  I hope it was useful
to you.

While it is certainly the case that each and every United
States citizen should read and learn the United States
Constitution, it is emphatically not the case that you are
entitled to make it mean whatever you chose it to mean.  As to
activist judges, the jurisprudence of which I am talking is
quite well established in Supreme Court precedent.  Until the
Supreme Court judges otherwise, or until we amend the
Constitution through the normal, established procedures, you
and I and every other United States citizen has a moral
obligation to abide by it.  That is what it means to live in a
Constitutional democracy.  Upholding the law as established is
something that you and I have a moral duty to do.  

Since I take the president of the College of William and Mary
to be upholding the law, I think he is to be commended for
removing the cross from the chapel.  Until the law changes, I
would hope that you, and every other conservative on this
list, would agree with me.

Roe v. Wade is irrelevant to this conversation, and I guess I
don't see why you bring it up?  What does that have to do with
Virginia history?  Nor do I see the relevance of bringing up
the laws of the European Union, since to my knowledge no
serious person here has proposed that we adopt them, nor is it
germane to Virginia history.  

Separation of Church and State, however, *is* a topic that is
quite germane to Virginia history.  Here, I will refer you to
the controversy in 1784 and 1785 over Patrick Henry's
accomodationist proposal to pass a law providing for state
support for "teachers of the Christian religion."  That law
was defeated, in large measure because evangelical Christians
in the state perceived, correctly, that such a law was not at
all in their best interests.  As Patrick Henry himself said,
in a somewhat different context, we would all do well to
profit from their example.  

The most cogent defense of the doctrine that Thomas Jefferson,
some years later, called "a wall of separation" between Church
and State, was provided by James Madison, in a document
entitled "A Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious
Assesments."  James Madison, you will recall, is the fellow
who, just a few years later, was resonsible in large measure
for drafting the Constitution of the United States.  More
importantly for our purposes here, it was also Madison who in
1791 drafted and secured ratification of the first ten
amendments to the United States Constitution.  Supreme Court
justices, reasonably enough, have tended to defer to Madison's
interpretation of the Constitution, and have cited his
Memorial and Remonstrance in their interpretation of the
religion clauses of the first amendment.  This strikes me as a
quite plausible strategy for interpreting the meaning of the
first amendment, in as much as Madison's view of the right
relation between Church and State is spelled out with great
clarity in the 1785 document.  Madison's Memorial and
Remonstrance is much more tightly argued than Jefferson's
letter to the Danbury Baptists, and thus is the superior
source for understanding his thinking.

If we use the docrtine of original intent, in other words, you
can make a strong case for the contemporary interpretation of
the religion clause of the first amendment.  Indeed, it is
those who seek to over turn this interpretation who are
"activist."  The traditional position is the one Madison and
Jefferson staked out in 1784 and 1785.

In my earlier post I argued that it would be deeply unwise and
imprudent for evangelicals to tighten the connection between
church and state, and that those evangelicals who argue for
that misunderstand their own history.  Were it not for the
evangelicals in the 1780s, we would not have the first
amendment as it is currently construed.  Without their
political support, Patrick Henry's bill would have passed.
Religious establishments have proved to be bad for the
vitality of religion, precisely as pious and observant
founders like Edmund Randolph predicted they would be.  We
should be grateful for the wisdom of the founders in this
regard, and it would be quite foolish for us to turn our back
on their insights.

I have now added to that argument, in suggesting that the
Constitution as written and as intended to be interpreted by
Madison and Jefferson supports the contemporary interpretation
of the religion clauses of the first amendment.  

Thus, conservatives are doubly obligated to support this
position--first because it is the right thing to do, if we
care about the vitality of religion; and second, because by
the standards of conservative jurisprudence, this is the
constitutionally correct interpretation of the intent of the
founders.  

All best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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