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Religious freedom praised
Justice Antonin Scalia deplores nation's move away from original intent of the Constitution.Date published: 1/13/2003
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stood on Washington Avenue facing the city's Religious Freedom Monument yesterday and bemoaned the nation's departure from the tradition the stone structure represents. He noted the U.S. Constitution forbids government from establishing a religion or prohibiting individuals from their free exercise of it. But it does not, he said, mandate a separation of government and religion--an interpretation that has grown popular over the past half-century. "The establishment clause was once well understood not to exclude God from the public forum and political life," Scalia told a crowd of nearly 150 gathered to commemorate the 226th anniversary of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Scalia, whose son Paul is a priest at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Spotsylvania County, said the nation's founding fathers acknowledged a sovereign God in establishing the government--as did the men who framed Virginia's statute in Fredericksburg in 1777. That statute served as the model for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "Separation of church and state was not our tradition until later," Scalia told the assembly of Protestants and Catholics gathered for yesterday's ceremony. Scalia cited President George Washington's establishment of a Thanksgiving proclamation that, he said, "gave thanks to God for the formation of the United States and asked the creator to forgive us our national transgressions." Scalia also noted that Congress has always employed chaplains, that every military service uses them and that an inscription on the nation's coins and currency reads "In God We Trust." Scalia, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and has been an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1986, also recited the statement he hears each time the high court convenes: "God save the United States and this honorable court." Scalia contrasted America's principle of freedom of religion with the European attitude forbidding public officials from invoking the name of God--noting the differences historically and today. The U.S. policy, he said, "is quite different from the tradition of secularism--of hostility to religion--that swept across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution and that became fashionable at about the same time Thomas Jefferson did his draft of the Virginia statute."
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 1/13/2003
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