America was founded on the principle that all U.S. citizens possess an inherent right to freely worship God without government influence, external intervention, or the advocation of a denominational theocracy. The national government cannot overrule this right, per the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (U.S. Const. art. VI. cl. 2), whereby the Constitution declares itself to be, “the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that “we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government;” and in Federalist No. 51 that “in a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.” The Supreme Court has avoided producing a definition of “religion” in any of its rulings; Judicial effort to historically define religion had “not been in First Amendment cases, but rather in decisions concerning the scope of a religious exemption to the Selective Service Act, which authorized the military draft,” (Chemerinsky, E., p. 1724, 1725). Black’s Law Dictionary defines “religion” as a “system of faith and worship usu. involving belief in a supreme being and usu. containing a moral or ethical code; esp., such a system recognized and practiced by a particular church, sect, or denomination,” (Garner, B. A. p. 1545).
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Religious Liberties
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America was founded on the principle that all U.S. citizens possess an inherent right to freely worship God without government influence, external intervention, or the advocation of a denominational theocracy. The national government cannot overrule this right, per the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (U.S. Const. art. VI. cl. 2), whereby the Constitution declares itself to be, “the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that “we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government;” and in Federalist No. 51 that “in a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.” The Supreme Court has avoided producing a definition of “religion” in any of its rulings; Judicial effort to historically define religion had “not been in First Amendment cases, but rather in decisions concerning the scope of a religious exemption to the Selective Service Act, which authorized the military draft,” (Chemerinsky, E., p. 1724, 1725). Black’s Law Dictionary defines “religion” as a “system of faith and worship usu. involving belief in a supreme being and usu. containing a moral or ethical code; esp., such a system recognized and practiced by a particular church, sect, or denomination,” (Garner, B. A. p. 1545).