Things have gotten to such a sorry, confused, soggy, dangerous mess that satanic literature is now being distributed in public schools.
The Delta County School district in Colorado felt compelled to allow Satanists to distribute their dark twisted activity books to middle schoolers. The Prince of Darkness has now been enthroned where the Son of God should sit.
We have now reached the utterly perverse point at which Gideons are not allowed to distribute the Word of God on sidewalks off school property while Satanists get to offer their benighted pamphlets on tables inside school buildings.
The district spokesman rather lamely said, “We’re trying to get the proper material out to kids.”
So, parents, this school district believes that literature honoring the chief demon of hell is now “proper material” for your children.
There is only one way for this nonsense to be stopped and that is by a return to the Founders’ Constitution. Not the one mangled beyond all recognition by hyperactivist judges, but the one given to us by James Madison, John Adams, George Washington and their peers.
The First Amendment protects the “free exercise” of “religion.” Everything hinges on what the Founders’ meant by the term “religion” If they meant “any supernatural system of belief,” then the Satanists have a point and we are doomed as a culture. However, if by “religion” the Founders meant Christianity, then the equation changes dramatically.
Joseph Story, in his monumental Commentaries on the Constitution, described clearly what the Founders were intending to accomplish with the First Amendment. Story was the longest serving associate justice of his day, was appointed to the Court by the James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, and authored the famous Amistad opinion that freed the slaves who had been held captive on the ship of that name.
Story said this about the First Amendment:
The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.
To countenance means to consider, to endorse, to sanction, or to promote. So Story says emphatically that with the First Amendment the Founders weren’t even considering let alone seeking to advance Islam, Judaism, atheism, Satanism, or any other supernatural belief system. No, the First Amendment was about protecting the free exercise of Christianity and Christianity alone.
So, who gets to decide whether Lucifer’s literature gets handed to students in public schools? According to the Founders, the states get to decide, without any interference from the Supreme Court or anybody else.
Here’s Story:
“Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions.”
In other words, if the state of Colorado doesn’t want to hand out the devil’s literature in its schools, it doesn’t have to. Nor does any other state in the Union.
Bottom line: if we want to keep hellish literature out of the hands of impressionable young students, all we have to do is get back to the Constitution the Founders gave us. Any takers?
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
