The Big Daddy

Amendment 1: Freedom of religion, press, expression, Ratified December 15, 1791

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As I mentioned in the last post, it is rather telling to see what gets put first on the list.  What's the first limit that the newly minted United States Congress chose to put upon themselves as a government?  Don't mess around with religion.  Contrary to what you might have heard, there was never an idea that this nation was supposed to be 100% Christian.  If there is any way in which these United States can be called a Christian nation it is because, as one of our founding principles we have given our citizens the right to be otherwise.  These freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, are in fact a result of the rather sordid history of Christendom, and the realization by many that witch trials, hundred year wars, crusades and inquisitions were rather not what Jesus was talking about.
There were people here who had come as refugees from persecution, real persecution too, not the type that is often felt when a privileged group all of the sudden has to face a level playing field.
It was remarkable for these men, of this era, to see that religion, any religion, must not be declared illegal, and that no religion should ever become the "official" religion of the nation.  For men of this era, every bit as beholden to the status quo as Old King George III, to understand that free speech, problematic though it might be, must be guaranteed in a free society.  For these men that now held the reigns of power in a new world to believe that the press can and should be allowed to function as more than just the mouthpiece of the principalities and powers.  For these crafters of the Republic to allow those very people they honestly and rightfully feared to assemble and protest.  These things were all remarkable.  To endorse them as the law of the land was borderline miraculous.
These men were not commoners, nor were they particularly charitable to each other or to the huddled masses.  They feared the very people they had stolen from Africa to help forge their empire as slaves.  They feared the restless indigenous population.  They feared the common farmers and publicans, they were not, in any sense, truly democratic, but they were the first to really take on the idea that government could be for the people, by the people, as Lincoln would say in the Gettysburg address almost 70 years in the future, after this grand enterprise almost came apart at the seams.
But the wars of religion, the naming of heretics, the suppression of the masses and the brutality of governments that brooked no dissent had worn thin.  So these imperfect men recognized their imperfection.  They saw within themselves the germ of tyranny and decided to limit the growth of the infection by naming and delineating more fully the "unalienable rights" that their Declaration of Independence had first introduced.
These days it's easy to forget what these words about freedom really mean.  It's easy to think, after two centuries that freedom of religion is just a code that was used to mean Christian hegemony, but that is not what they meant then, and it is certainly not what a living law could possibly mean now, where self identified Christians are well on the road to being a minority, and actual Jesus followers have been a minority for a long, long time.
The guarantee, to be able to worship how you will, to say what you will, and to be able to stand up for yourself (and others, we probably forget that too often) against the powers, is essentially a Christian dream, and it is all we should ever ask of our government.
When Satan tempted Christ with the promise of worldly power, Jesus said, "No Thanks." I don't think he has changed his mind.  I think the thing that we ought to want as a people is a place where the Government does not try to get between us and God, and certainly one where the Government doesn't try to represent God, it will do it badly if history is any teacher.