Joseph Story Quotes
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent when the public worship of God, and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem as yet new in the history of the world, abundant as it has been in experiments in the theory of government.
Joseph Story, 1779-1845, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Commentaries on the Constitution
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It was drafted by John Adams. Note that there was freedom of religion for Christians and not others. Of all the colonies, Massachusetts had the worst record of religious intolerance with Puritans controlling everything. Rhode Island and Connecticut were created by religious dissenters from Massachusetts. Adams had all he could do to get the Christian sects on an equal footing ratified. The other colonies however, insisted to a total freedom of religion clause which became the First Amendment to the national Constitution. Adams himself was a kind of secular, cultural Christian who did not believe in the divinity of Christ and other Christian doctrine. See {592695} to illustrate this.
The same phrase was used by Count de Montalembert at a Catholic conference in Malines, August 20, 1863, and is sometimes attributed to him.
Catholics were blamed by some for the defeat of Henry Clay in 1844. Anti catholic sentiment was high:. Johnson was then a Congressman representing a district where there were few Catholics and strong anti-Catholic feeling.
Opponents of the strict separation of church and state use this quotation to support their view. However, Story herein describes public sentiment, not what was passed and ratified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. See {614309} and {614310} for his statements from the same work that show that there was no question in his mind but that church and state are separated by the Constitution and the First Amendment.
In that era the favoritism of the government—especially state and local government—in favor of the of the Protestant Christians. Politicians started challenging the clear unconstitutional favoritism. The reformers were Republicans often referred to by the Democrats as “Godless Republicans”. A century later the Republicans would oppose strict separation of church and state with the Southerners and Fundamentalist Christians in their party and the Democrats fighting to maintain strict separation of church and state.
Joseph Story was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1812 to 1845, during the Marshall Court and early-Taney Court eras. He is most remembered for his opinions in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee and The Amistad case, and especially for his magisterial Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, first published in 1833. Dominating the field in the 19th century, this work is a cornerstone of early American jurisprudence. It is the second comprehensive treatise on the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and remains a critical source of historical information about the forming of the American republic and the early struggles to define its law.
