A letter from the American Christian Heritage Center in Sunday’s Daily News argues, as conservative Christians are prone to do, that the purpose of the First Amendment is to ensure “no denomination would be established as a national church,” not to separate the church from the state. On the Center’s Web site, the author of the letter, one Calvin Longton, points out that “separation of church and state” isn’t actually in the Constitution.

Perfectly true. But neither is one single word about Christianity or God, other than the fact there shall be no religious tests required for federal office. So if Jefferson’s reference to the “separation of church and state” is irrelevant to understanding the First Amendment—since it isn’t in the Constitution—presumably the Founders’ Christian beliefs aren’t relevant either, since they aren’t included.

After all, it’s not as if they couldn’t have said “Congress shall make no law representing the establishment of a federal church” if they’d wanted to. Or “prohibiting the free exercise of any Christian sect.” Or said their shall be no religious test applied to any professing Christian.

Instead the First Amendment speaks about the free exercise of “religion”, as if they (unlike so many people) conceived of a nation where nonChristian believers might be free to worship as they chose.

Go figure.

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