by David Barton
No free government now exists in the world unless where Christianity is acknowledged and is the religion of the country…. Its foundations are broad and strong and deep … it is the purest system of morality, the firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of all human laws.12
The People v. Ruggles, 1811
Supreme Court of New York
This was the second case cited in Holy Trinity, and the facts are described in the case:
The defendant was indicted … for that he did … wickedly, maliciously, and blasphemously utter and with a loud voice publish in the presence and hearing of divers good and Christian people, of and concerning the Christian religion, and of and concerning Jesus Christ, the false, scandalous, malicious, wicked and blasphemous words following: “Jesus Christ was a bastard and his mother must be a whore,” in contempt of the Christian religion…. [T]he defendant was tried and found guilty and was sentenced by the court to be imprisoned for three months and to pay a fine of $500.13
The defendant’s attorney had presented a simple defense:
There are no statutes concerning religion…. The constitution allows a free toleration to all religions and all kinds of worship…. Judaism and Mahometanism may be preached here without any legal animadversion [criticism]…. [T]he prisoner may have been a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Socinian: and if so, he had a right, by the constitution, to declare his opinions.14
The court’s decision in this case was delivered by Chief Justice James Kent, who, along with Justice Joseph Story, is considered one of the two Fathers of American Jurisprudence. (In fact, Kent’s four-volume Commentaries on American Law eventually replaced Blackstone’s as the standard for American law.) Notice Judge Kent’s decision in this case:
Nothing could be more offensive to the virtuous part of the community, or more injurious to the tender morals of the young, than to declare such profanity lawful….
The free, equal, and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious subject, is granted and secured; but to revile … the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right…. [W]e are a Christian people and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors [other religions]…. [We are] people whose manners … and whose morals have been elevated and inspired … by means of the Christian religion.
Though the constitution has discarded religious establishments, it does not forbid judicial cognizance of those offenses against religion and morality which have no reference to any such establishment…. This [constitutional] declaration (noble and magnanimous as it is, when duly understood) never meant to withdraw religion in general, and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligation from all consideration and notice of the law…. To construe it [the constitution] as breaking down the common law barriers against licentious, wanton, and impious attacks upon Christianity itself, would be an enormous perversion of its meaning.15
Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 1844
United States Supreme Court
This was the third case cited in Holy Trinity, and it involved the probation of the will of Frenchman Stephen Girard who had arrived in America before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Girard settled in Philadelphia and lived there until his death in 1831, whereupon his entire estate and personal property (valued at over $7 million) was bequeathed to the city on the condition that it construct an orphanage and a college according to his stipulations. Girard’s heirs (the plaintiffs) filed suit contesting the will on two grounds: (1) that a private will could not be given to a public entity; and (2) that as a provision for the college, Girard had stipulated:
I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises…. My desire is that all the instructors and teachers in the college shall take pains to instill into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of morality.16
His requirement to exclude clergy and religious teachings from a school was unprecedented. The great Daniel Webster (the “Defender of the Constitution” ) and Walter Jones were the lawyers for the plaintiffs. Jones argued that:
[T]he plan of education proposed is anti-Christian and therefore repugnant to the law.17
Webster reminded the Court that:
Both in the Old and New Testaments its importance [i.e., the religious instruction of youth] is recognized. In the Old it is said, “Thou shalt diligently teach them to thy children,” and in the New, “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not…. ” No fault can be found with Girard for wishing a marble college to bear his name for ever, but it is not valuable unless it has a fragrance of Christianity about it.18
Webster believed that the single provision excluding clergy was sufficient to cause Girard’s entire will to be set aside. The city’s attorneys disagreed; although they, too, believed that it was wrong to exclude clergy, they claimed that instead of contesting the entire will, the plaintiffs should simply have:
[J]oined with us in asking the State to cut off the obnoxious clause.19
As the city’s attorneys explained to the Court, religion must be taught at the school:
The purest principles of morality are to be taught. Where are they found? Whoever searches for them must go to the source from which a Christian man derives his faith – the Bible…. [T]here is an obligation to teach what the Bible alone can teach, viz. a pure system of morality.20 (emphasis added)
After all the arguments were finished, the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court was delivered by Justice Joseph Story. The Court first ruled that Girard’s estate could be delivered to the city of Philadelphia, but that the teaching of Christianity could not be excluded from the school:
Christianity … is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public…. It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider … the establishment of a school or college for the propagation of Judaism or Deism or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country.21
The Court then pointed out to both sides that even though the will had prohibited clergy, it had not prohibited Christian instruction and was therefore constitutionally acceptable. As the Court explained:
Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics [the clergy]…. And we cannot overlook the blessings which such [lay]men by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must impart to their youthful pupils. Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine revelation in the college – its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? … Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?22 (emphasis added)
While many legal controversies had marked this case, on the issue of Christian teachings in this government-run school, all parties had agreed: the plaintiff’s lawyers said education without Christianity was “repugnant”; the city’s lawyers declared it “obnoxious”; and the Supreme Court said that it couldn’t be permitted – moral principles in schools must be taught from the Bible.
Commonwealth v. Abner Kneeland, 1838
Supreme Court of Massachusetts
This case, like both the Updegraph and the Ruggles cases, also involved an attack against God and Christianity. However, unlike those two cases, these attacks had been published rather than spoken. The indictment recorded Kneeland’s published statements:
“The Universalists believe in a god which I do not; but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes … is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination”; “Universalists believe in Christ, which I do
not; but believe that the whole story concerning Him is … a fable and a fiction.”23
The indictment against him invoked an interesting legal term – a term unknown to contemporary courts when associated with God:
The defendant admitted the writing and publishing of the libel.24 (emphasis added)
To libel means intentionally to write things about other persons that are false and would publicly injure their reputation or expose them to public ridicule.25 While such attacks on individuals still remain illegal today, in previous years, such attacks on God and Christ fell under the laws constructed to protect reputations – the laws against libel.
After Kneeland was convicted by the jury, he appealed, explaining that his conviction should be overturned because: (1) he claimed he did not deny a belief in god; he was a pantheist and only denied the belief in a God; he felt that everything was god; (2) he argued that the law under which he was convicted had been superseded and overturned by the constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom; and (3) he believed that the laws against blasphemy were a violation of the “freedom of the press,” claiming that the constitution “guarantees to me the strict right of propagating my sentiments, by way of argument or discussion, on religion or any other subject.”26
The court examined whether the law under which he was convicted had been overturned by the constitution and concluded that it had not since the law forbidding blasphemy …
… was passed very soon after the adoption of the constitution and no doubt many members of the convention which framed the constitution were members of the legislature which passed this law.27 (emphasis added)
The court next provided numerous precedents to demonstrate that prohibitions against blasphemy did not conflict with constitutional guarantees for religious rights:
In New Hampshire, the constitution of which State has a similar declaration of [religious] rights, the open denial of the being and existence of God or of the Supreme Being is prohibited by statute and declared to be blasphemy.
In Vermont, with a similar declaration of rights, a statute was passed in 1797 by which it was enacted that if any person shall publicly deny the being and existence of God or the Supreme Being, or shall contumeliously reproach his providence and government, he shall be deemed a disturber of the peace and tranquility of the State and an offender against the good morals and manners of society and shall be punishable by fine….
The State of Maine also having adopted the same constitutional provision with that of Massachusetts in her declaration of rights in respect to religious freedom, immediately after the adoption of the constitution reenacted the Massachusetts statute against blasphemy….
In New York the universal toleration of all religious professions and sentiments is secured in the most ample manner…. Notwithstanding this constitutional declaration carrying the doctrine of unlimited toleration as far as the peace and safety of any community will allow, the courts have decided that blasphemy was a crime at common law and was not abrogated by the constitution.28
The court finally addressed the arguments of “freedom of the press” and emphasized the responsibility which limited that freedom:
According to the argument … every act, however injurious or criminal which can be committed by the use of language, may be committed … if such language is printed. Not only therefore would the article in question become a general license for scandal, calumny [slander] and falsehood, … all other crimes however atrocious, if conveyed in printed language, would be dispunishable.29
The Founders never intended the unlimited, unrestrained, and often unconscionable “freedom of the press” practiced today. In fact, Thomas Jefferson had declared:
While we deny that [the federal] Congress have a right to control the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the right of the States, and their exclusive right, to do so.30
While many civil libertarians today cringe at the thought of “controlling” the press, the controls were actually those which common sense and reason dictated, and all were rooted within the concept of responsibility (in fact, responsibility and the duty of stewardship is intrinsic to the preservation of every liberty). Concerning the balance between the freedom of the press and the responsibility of the press, printer and publisher Benjamin Franklin explained:
If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please; but if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating [falsely accusing], and defaming one another, I, for my part … [am] willing to part with my share of it whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law, and shall cheerfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself.31
Justice James Wilson agreed that responsibility was the central issue:
What is meant by the liberty of the press is that there should be no antecedent restraint upon it; but that every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the government, or the safety, character, and property of the individual.32
The exercise of any freedom without responsibility more often than not leads to licentiousness, and often to tyranny. As illustrated by the following statements, this was never intended:
“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” That this Amendment was intended to secure to every citizen an absolute right to speak, or write, or print, whatever he might please without any responsibility, public or private, therefore, is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any rational man. This would allow every citizen a right to destroy at his pleasure the reputation, the peace, the property, and even the personal safety of every other citizen.33 JOSEPH STORY, U. S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE; A FATHER OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE
If a printer offends you, attack him in your paper, because he can defend himself with the same weapons with which you wound him; type against type is fair play; but to attack a man who has no types nor printing press, or who does not know anything about the manual of using them, is cowardly in the highest degree.34 BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
“[E]very citizen might freely speak, write, and print, on any subject, [but is] responsible for the abuse of that liberty.” … Without such a check, the press, in the hands of evil and designing men, would become a most formidable engine [instrument] as mighty for mischief as for good.35 JAMES KENT, A FATHER OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE
While the issue of the press is really a sidenote to the central issue of the Kneeland case, it nonetheless underscores the fact that too often today the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and speech have been misinterpreted to protect irresponsible and even irrational exercises of personal vindictive prerogatives. Without the requirement of accountability, Justice Joseph Story warned that the press would “become the scourge of the republic, first denouncing the principles of liberty, and then, by rendering the most virtuous patriots odious through the terrors of the press, introducing despotism in its worst form.”36
John M’Creery’s Lessee v. Allender, 1799
Supreme Court of Maryland
Thomas M’Creery emigrated from Ireland to the United States where, upon his death, he left his American estate to a relative in Ireland. It was doubted whether M’Creery’s estate could legally be left to an alien unless it could be proven that he had become a citizen of the United States before his death. The case was settled when a certificate was produced showing that he had indeed become a naturalized American citizen through an oath taken before Judge Samuel Chase. (Chase not only was a signer of the Declaration of Independence but was also nominated by President George Washington as a Justice for the United States Supreme Court.) Below is an excerpt from the document Chase executed in the naturalization of M’Creery; notice especially the requirement for naturalization:
I, Samuel Chase, Chief Judge of the State of Maryland, do hereby certify all whom it may concern that … personally appeared
before me Thomas M’Creery and did repeat and subscribe a declaration of his belief in the Christian Religion and take the oath required by the Act of Assembly of this State entitled “An Act for Naturalization.”37
Runkel v. Winemiller, 1799
Supreme Court of Maryland
This case involved a conflict between a minister of a German Reformed Christian Church and the church from which he had been dismissed. The Judge who delivered the ruling noted that the court’s decision had been unanimous. What was it upon which all the Judges concurred?
Religion is of general and public concern and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.38
The Commonwealth v. Sharpless,
1815 Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
This case, and two following it, deal with “morality;” and although many today assert that “you can’t legislate morality,” such charges are utter nonsense. Every law that exists is the legislation of morality. As signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon explained:
[C]onsider all morality in general as conformity to a law.39
