David Barton

Let us enter on this important business under the idea that we are Christians on whom the eyes of the world are now turned. Let us earnestly call and beseech him for Christ’s sake to preside in our councils. Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress

The ethics, doctrines, and examples furnished by Christianity exhibit the best models for the laws. Dewit Clinton, Introduced the Twelfth Amendment; Governor of New York; U.S. Senator

An early House Judiciary Committee affirmed the Founders’ lack of pluralistic intent when it declared:

Christianity was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. The Founders did respect other religions; however, they neither promoted pluralism nor intended that the First Amendment do so. Although the Court’s decision in this case was favorable in the sense that tax exemptions for churches were preserved, the ruling demonstrated a major inconsistency by the Court: it upheld tax exemptions because of their historical precedent. As the Court explained:

In resolving such questions of interpretation “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”  The more long-standing and widely accepted a practice, the greater its impact upon constitutional interpretation.

However, Justice William Douglas, who had voted to remove tax exemptions from churches, pointed out in his dissent that the Court’s reliance on history and precedent to arrive at its conclusion in this case was the very practice it had avoided in previous First Amendment cases. He noted, for example, that although school prayer had been as equally a long-standing historical tradition as tax exemptions, this had not prevented it from being declared unconstitutional. The Walz case, despite its favorable ruling, had introduced yet another new and different purpose to the First Amendment by claiming its intent was to promote pluralism. Stone v. Graham, 1980