Religion under the State Constitutions, 1776-1800

Abstract

Attempts to find the historical meaning of the First Amend ment's religion clauses have often focused on the writings of leading framers such as Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, the debates in the First Congress, the actions in leading states on religion, or the specific government practices of the time re lated to religion, especially in Congress. Surprisingly, little at tention has been paid to the state constitutions of the period, despite the fact that they provide a resource which is more spe cific, reliable, and relevant to the Bill of Rights than debates or other historical records. Historians who look at aid to religion contemporary to the First Amendment have a difficult time in showing that the Bill of Rights, which was meant to cover only Congress, could not have been intended to oppose these actions in the states; in fact, many state interactions with religion were considered so unac ceptable that they were ended in the period from 1776 to 1800, or early in the nineteenth century, so the idea that a newly formed (and deeply mistrusted) national government might be allowed such power was ludicrous. The use of actions of the First Congress (such as hiring a minister to lead them in prayer) to give meaning to the First Amendment also indicates a lack of perspective, since it defines higher Constitutional law by mere statutory law rather than by objective principle, and gives an air of infallibility to the framers which they themselves did not accept. These state constitutions (and more importantly, how they evolved over this short period of time) are the most appropriate analogue to the Bill of Rights because they served the same pur pose: to establish limits to the power of government in a written declaration of fundamental liberties. In addition, state constitu tions were usually written by state legislatures (in 1780, Massa chusetts was the first to hold a separate convention for this purpose), and often by nearly the same state legislatures which