Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom


In 1786 on January 16, the Virginia Assembly passed Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom. Jefferson had tried to get it passed once, but failed.

In the fall of 1785, Jefferson was Ambassador to France, and James Madison propelled the bill to passage in response to a bill by Patrick Henry that would have forced Virginians to support Christian ministers with their tax dollars.


The Jefferson bill initiated societal change away from established churches toward religious freedom and became the model for the first amendment religion clauses, creating the the trend that would sweep throughout the states, disestablishing all state religions, until finally in 1833, when the last one, Massachusetts, after almost two hundred years, acquiesed, they all were gone.



The full text of Jefferson's statute:

VIRGINIA STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

[Sec. 1] Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right; that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

[Sec. 2] Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
[Sec. 3] And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

CEO Pay: Money for Nothing? By Dean Baker
Monday 14 January 2008

One of the standard yearend rituals is to assess the stock market's performance for the year. Many people noted the Dow Jones index rose a respectable 7.5 percent in 2007. Before anyone celebrates this modest achievement, it is important to remember the Dow includes just 30 blue chip stocks. The much broader S&P 500 index rose by just 3.5 percent, slightly less than the rate of inflation in 2007. In other words, the real return for most stockholders was roughly equal to what their stock paid out in dividends, not a terribly good story.

In fact, poor stock returns are not a new phenomenon. If we go back ten years, we find the S&P 500 has risen by a cumulative total of 52.6 percent from December 1997 to December 2007. After adjusting for inflation, the increase was 17.3 percent, which translates into real growth of just 1.6 percent a year. Add in a dividend yield of approximately the same size, and we get that the average real return on stocks over the last decade has been 3.2 percent, a bit lower than the yield that was available on inflation-indexed government bonds ten years ago.

This is rather striking. It is unlikely many people invested in stock for the sort of return that is typically associated with government bonds, which are much less risky. At least for the last decade, stockholders have not been rewarded for taking this risk.

This brings us to the topic of CEO pay. We saw an explosion in CEO pay that began in the eighties and has continued into the current decade. While the ratio of the pay of CEOs to an average worker had been around 30 to 1 in the sixties and seventies, by the end of the eighties it stood at more than 70 to 1. It crossed 100 to 1 in the early nineties. The ratio has been perched between 200 to 1 and 300 to 1 since the late nineties, with CEOs at major companies routinely pulling down pay packages in the tens of millions, and running into the hundreds of millions in good years.

This explosion of pay at the top was justified, by many economists, based on the returns CEOs produced for shareholders. The argument was that even these incredibly high salaries still were just a small fraction of the value the CEOs generated, so their pay was money well spent. These exorbitant salaries gave the CEOs the necessary incentive to produce extraordinary returns.

While this argument may never have been terribly compelling (it would have been hard to keep a company's stock prices from rising in the nineties bubble), it clearly is not true today. The typical CEO is not producing great returns for shareholders. The average return is weak, and in many cases shareholders are incurring loses due to CEO mismanagement. Even in the disaster stories, the CEOs still seem to get extraordinary pay packages.

The poster child for this new trend is Robert Nardelli. In five years as CEO at Home Depot, he lost shareholders 40 percent of the stock's value, more than $25 billion. When he was eventually pushed out the door, he walked away with a compensation package worth more than $200 million. Call it "pay for nonperformance."

In the fifties and sixties, it was common to think of corporations as bodies that served a variety of stakeholders. In addition to shareholders, corporations were also seen as having responsibilities to their workers, to the communities in which they were located, to their consumers, and even the larger society. This diverse group of stakeholders sometimes meant that a company should sacrifice short-term profit maximization in order to meet some broader goal.

In the eighties, we got the shareholder revolution, which said corporate management should focus simply on maximizing shareholder value. If this meant mass layoffs of workers or abandoning communities where a company had deep roots, so be it.

As a result of the shareholder revolution, the range of constituencies the corporation was expected to serve was drastically narrowed. Concerns for workers, communities, and the larger society were jettisoned, with shareholder value being the only true concern for the corporation and the CEOs that run them. This single-minded concern for profit maximization and shareholder value was supposed to be best for society in the long run.

It turns out, the range of constituencies has been narrowed even further than we realized. With recent evidence on returns, it doesn't look like shareholders fit in the equation anymore. At least the CEOs are still doing well.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org).

More Attempts at Chipping Away...

 

On Monday 14 January 2008 House Resolution 888, sponsored by Congressman Randy Forbes...has in it a proclamation that states, "Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of 'Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,' announced that they 'desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement' and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported 'into the different ports of the States of the Union'."

'...The resolution, which was first reported on Talk2Action by Chris Rodda, author of the book "Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History," and the senior research director at the government watchdog organization The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), was introduced by Forbes on December 18, the last day Congress was in session before lawmakers left for their winter break.

Rodda first discovered the resolution after researching Congress's legislative web site for work she has been doing on behalf of MRFF.

"House Resolution 888," said Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit watchdog group which aims a close eye on the military to ensure it abides by the law mandating the separation between church and state, "...is a myriad of tortured and deliberate historical fictions, fused by it's Congressional-member drafters into a ....Christian exceptionalism and triumphalism, and clearly illuminate its private sector and legislative sponsors' desire to spare absolutely no effort to complete the transformation of our country into "The United Christian States of America."

Weinstein was a former White House counsel during the Reagan administration, former general counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and a former Air Force Judge Advocate General.

In House Resolution 888, Rodda says Forbes has grossly misrepresented and distorted the historical record he references in the 75 proclamation of H. Res 888.

"This resolution, which purports to promote 'education on America's history of religious faith,' is packed with the same American history errors found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books of pseudo-historians like David Barton," Rodda wrote on the Talk2Action web site.

"It lists a total of seventy-five 'Whereas,' leading up to four resolves, the third of which is particularly disturbing - that the U.S. House of Representatives 'rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources,' which is a considerable travesty considering that most of the 'history' this resolve aims to promote in our public buildings and schools IS NOT REAL!"

One example, says Rodda, is the proclamation by Forbes that "Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible that would be 'a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools' and therefore approved the production of the first English language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional endorsement that the United States in Congress assembled ... recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States."

"Congress did not 'pursue a plan to print' this Bible, as Mr. Forbes claims, nor did they 'approve the production,' Rodda said.

"Robert Aitken was already printing his Bibles as of January 21, 1781 when he petitioned Congress. All they did was grant one of several requests made by Aitken by having their chaplains examine his work, and allowing him to publish their resolution stating that, based on the chaplains' report, they were satisfied that his edition was accurate. The words 'a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools' are taken from a letter written by Aitken, not the resolution of Congress."

Forbes did not respond to a request for comment.

Congressman Forbes is using the resolution to circumvent the The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights which says Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion.

Forbes has also introduced two bills, one that would protect the rights of lawmakers to express "their religious beliefs through public prayer by removing all establishment clause cases involving prayer by public officials from federal court jurisdiction to the jurisdiction of state courts." The other legislation Forbes introduced "would bar judges from awarding legal fees to groups that sue municipalities for violating the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion."

Forbes and two other congressmen held up passage of the defense budget for several weeks over the removal of a military chaplain prayer provision that sought to authorize chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus Christ at military invocations.

The guidelines, rewritten in 2005 after Weinstein exposed the religious intolerance and anti-Semitism carried out by fundamentalist officers, staff and cadets at the AIr Force Academy in Colorado Springs against those at the academy who refused to accept Jesus Christ as "their personal Lord and savior". Weinstein wrote about the issue in

his book "With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against An Evangelical Coup in America's Military."

Forbes, along with congressmen Todd Akin of Missouri, and Walter Jones of North Carolina, threatened to block passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2007 unless Congress passed the bill with their proposal intact and the proposal was eventually withdrawn, and in exchange, Forbes and his colleagues were handed a deal abrogating the Air Force and Navy guidelines on religious expression, essentially giving evangelical military chaplains a loophole to proselytize, an issue Weinstein says he intends to fight in court.

Last year, MRFF filed a lawsuit in federal court against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US Army Maj. Freddy Welborn, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The complaint, filed in US District Court in Kansas City, alleges Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist currently on active duty in Combat Operations Base Speicher, Iraq, had his First Amendment rights violated when Welborn threatened to retaliate against Hall and block his reenlistment in the Army because of Hall's atheist beliefs."

Church historian Gary Dorrian has a commentary about Mitt Romney's speech -- and the political ripples since -- over at the web site of Union Theological Seminary.

"When Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960, the Catholic Church was still officially opposed to religious freedom. Kennedy's adviser on the church and state issue was American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray, who approved the Houston speech a few hours before it was delivered. But Murray's views on this subject, while important to Kennedy's campaign, were contrary to church doctrine. In 1955 the Vatican had silenced Murray on this subject, forbidding him to write about religious freedom. In 1965 Murray's view prevailed at Vatican Council II, as the church changed its teaching on religious freedom. Had Kennedy allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion of Catholic doctrine in 1960, it would not have gone well.

Romney keenly understands that the same thing is true in his case, only more so; thus he ruled out option two. The option that he took was the generic one of devoting an entire speech to the issue while saying as little as possible. He stood up for his Mormon faith without saying what it was. With only slight tweaks he gave a generic religion-in-public speech that any Republican or Democratic candidate might have delivered. The only section with an edge was his shot at "the religion of secularism."

In Romney's telling, the difference between the 1960s and today on this subject is that secularism has grown powerful. Secular types are trying to strip the public sphere of "any acknowledgment of God," he warns. However, that is far from the whole story. In 1967 George Romney could run for president without having to defend or even mention his Mormon religion. Mitt Romney surely realizes that something has gone wrong in American politics and culture since then, even as he does a delicate dance with the very movement that changed the rules and made his theology the issue. If Romney thinks he has put that issue to rest, he has a rude surprise coming."

What Is the Purpose of Life on Earth?

Man was created in the image of God and placed on this earth to experience existence between the pre-mortal life and post-mortal life as a part of the evolution of his eternal being. Mortal life is a test to see if we'll obey, not only the lower laws to which mortals are born, but a test to see if we'll obey, as they are learned, the higher, eternal laws, which God, Himself, obeys. Only by obeying both the lower and the higher laws can we return to Him in the postmortal life. The mission of each person born in mortality is the search for the way to return to life in the eternal worlds from whence we came, a process of continuous evolution in always becoming. Accomplishing that goal can only be achieved by learning that we were begotten by God, the Father of our spirits, by learning the laws which govern that process of return and by adhering to them once they are known. There is no other way.

In the process of learning and applying those laws in this sojourn on earth, one may fall short of knowledge and will, and have to take a step back, re-assess the situation to once again proceed forward. Only by faith in God that He will provide guidance for us to recover and continue to proceed forward can we each one evolve to become that which He desires for us and we desire for ourselves and for all who have lived in mortality, now live, and will come to live. We agreed with this plan and we voted for it by acclamation as intelligent entities in our pre-mortal life. We agreed to move to this earth, acquire a mortal body, and live the laws we obeyed in the previous plane of our existance. We agreed that we would allow a veil to fall between us and our previous life, so that we could live by faith for humility's sake. For it is only when we are humble are we able to learn.

President Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1995) tells it this way:

“Our first parents, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God. By eating the forbidden fruit, they became mortal. Consequently, they and all of their descendants became subject to both mortal and spiritual death (mortal death, the separation of body and spirit; and spiritual death, the separation of the spirit from the presence of God and death as pertaining to the things of the spirit).

“In order for Adam to regain his original state (to be in the presence of God), an atonement for this disobedience was necessary. In God’s divine plan, provision was made for a redeemer to break the bonds of death and, through the resurrection, make possible the reunion of the spirits and bodies of all persons who had dwelt on earth. “Jesus of Nazareth was the one who, before the world was created, was chosen to come to earth to perform this service, to conquer mortal death” (“The True Way of Life and Salvation,” Ensign, May 1978, 6).

No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old)

08 January 2008

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in Reagan Administration

December did not bring Americans any jobs. To the contrary, the private sector lost 13,000 jobs from the previous month.

If December is a harbinger of the new year, it is going to be a bad one. The past year, hailed by Republican propagandists and "free trade" economists as proof of globalism's benefit to Americans, was dismal. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' nonfarm payroll data, the US "super economy" created a miserable 1,054,000 net new jobs during 2007.

This is not enough to keep up with population growth--even at the rate discouraged Americans, unable to find jobs, are dropping out of the work force--thus the rise in the unemployment rate to 5%.

During the past year, US goods producing industries, continuing a long trend, lost 374,000 jobs.

But making things was the "old economy." The "new economy" provides services. Last year 1,428,000 private sector service jobs were created.

Are the "free trade" propagandists correct that these service jobs, which are our future, are high-end jobs in research and development, innovation, venture capitalism, information technology, high finance, and science and engineering where the US allegedly has such a shortage of scientists and engineers that it must import them from abroad on work visas?

Not according to the official job statistics.

What occupations provided the 1.4 million service jobs in 2007?

Waitresses and bartenders accounted for 304,200, or 21% of the new service jobs last year and 29% of the net new jobs.

Health care and social assistance accounted for 478,400, or 33% of the new service jobs and 45% of the net new jobs. Ambulatory health care and hospitals accounted for the lion's share of these jobs.

Professional and business services accounted for 314,000, or 22% of the new service jobs and 30% of the net new jobs.

Are these professional and business service jobs the high-end jobs of which "free traders" speak? Decide for yourself.

Services to buildings and dwellings account for 53,600 of the jobs. Accounting and bookkeeping services account for 60,500 of the jobs. Architectural and engineering services account for 54,700 of the jobs. Computer systems design and related services account for 70,400 of the jobs. Management consultants account for 88,400 of the jobs.

There were more jobs for hospital orderlies than for architects and engineers. Waitresses and bartenders accounted for as many of last year's new jobs as the entirety of professional and business services.

Wholesale and retail trade, transportation, and utilities accounted for 181,000 of 2007's new jobs.

Where are the rest of the new jobs? There are a few scattered among arts, entertainment, and recreation, repair and maintenance, personal and laundry services, and membership associations and organizations.

That's it.

Keep in mind that the loss of 374,000 goods producing jobs must be subtracted from the 1,428,000 new service jobs to arrive at the net job gain figure.

The new service jobs account for more than 100% of the net new jobs.

Keep in mind, too, that many of the new jobs are not filled by American citizens.

Many of the engineering and science jobs were filled by foreigners brought in on work visas. Indians and others from abroad can be hired to work in the US for one-third less. The engineering and science jobs that are offshored are paid as little as one-fifth of the US salary. Even foreign nurses are brought in on work visas. No one knows how many of the hospital orderlies are illegals.

What a super new economy Americans have! US job growth has a distinctly third world flavor.

A very small percentage of 2007's new jobs required a college education. Since there are so few jobs for university graduates, how is "education the answer"?

Where is the benefit to Americans of offshoring? The answer is that the benefit is confined to a few highly paid executives who receive multi-million dollar bonuses for increasing profits by offshoring jobs. The rest of the big money went to Wall Street manipulators who sold trusting people subprime derivatives.

"Free traders" will assert that the benefit is in low Wal-Mart prices. But the prices are low only because China keeps its currency pegged to the dollar. Thus, the Chinese currency value falls with the dollar. The peg will not continue forever. The dollar has lost 60% of its value against the Euro during the years of 2001 - 2007. Already China is having to adjust the peg. When the peg goes, Wal-Mart shoppers will think they are in Neiman Marcus.

Just as Americans have been betrayed by "their" leaders in government at all levels, they have been betrayed by business "leaders" on Wall Street and in the corporations. US government and business elites have proven themselves to be Americans' worst enemies.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.