Federal Judge Prohibits Prayer at Texas Graduation Ceremony

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Actually instead of setting a bad precedent I believe it illustrates exactly how the founders intended the first Amendment to be understood.

We have the freedom to worship. Nobody can force you but nobody can stop you either. The modern notion that the 1st Amendment bans all references to God in public functions is something that I doubt any of the founders would have agreed to.

The Founder who masterminded the Constitution would certainly have agreed with that ban.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

-James Madison, Detached Memoranda
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/found...ligions64.html

Madison also believed that the military should not have chaplains, and that if Congress insisted on prayer then they should pay the chaplains out of their own pockets rather than have the taxpayers do it.