The History of the 1954 Johnson Amendment
It’s Relationship to Jefferson’s
Wall of Separation View,
It’s Unconstitutional Nature, and It’s Remedy in Law – HR
235
By Barbara Ritchie Pond
A History of the Johnson
Amendment of 1954 and Its Violation of
Rights, Protected by the Bill of Rights within the U.S. Constitution – Amendment 1
In 1954, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, faced fierce
re-election opposition from anti-leftist groups and conservative
Christians. He successfully changed the
IRS code, prohibiting non-profits and churches from endorsing or opposing
political candidates. Such language was
a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the law of the
land which states, “Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech...” Johnson’s IRS
insertion was then, and is now, a violation of our individual rights of freedom
of speech and the free exercise of religion.
Prior to this time, no restrictions on the free speech of church
entities and their members existed. This
is all condoned under a false view of Jefferson’s
so-called “wall of separation” doctrine.
Jefferson’s Wall of Separation
Doctrine, Misunderstood/Misused
The term “wall of separation” does not appear in
the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of
Independence. It is a term which first
appeared in a letter from Thomas Jefferson written to the Danbury Baptists. Neither was Jefferson the author of the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Our 3rd President of the United States, James Madison, was
its author. Jefferson wrote about it,
but Jefferson was not the mind behind it. It was patterned after the
freedom-of-religion wording (also written primarily by James Madison with input
from Baptist groups) within the Virginia Constitution. The term “wall of
separation,” as Jefferson explained it, had to
do with the non-interference of government into established religions and
religious practices. It did not, in Jefferson’s
day, apply to “No Christian or Church Involvement in
Politics.” It did not prohibit church,
pastor, or believer involvement in the
public political arena.
Jefferson said, “In matters of
religion, I have considered that its
free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the power of the
General Government….” Jefferson’s wall-of-separation view was that government
could not interfere in religion — religion and religious practice! Liberals lifted out the “wall of separation”
phraseology, and over many years, ascribed it to the opposite view — the
non-Jeffersonian view — that religions and religious entities cannot actively
involve themselves in elections, government entities, and politics in general.
There are those who love to quote scraps of
Jefferson, who eliminate the weightier remarks of Jefferson
regarding church-state relationships, the moral law, and individual
rights. For example, Jefferson
spoke often of God in His speeches before the American nation. He also alluded often to God’s “moral
law.” He openly spoke of man’s moral
duties in society — not just his duties as an individual. Issues, to Jefferson, were moral — not just political. “Man,” Jefferson said, “has been subjected by His Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or
conscience as it is sometimes called, are evidence with which his Creator has furnished him...The moral duties which exist between
individual and individual in a state of nature accompany them into a state of
society...their Maker not having released them from those duties on
their forming themselves into a nation.”
Yes, Jefferson believed in a Creator
God, the moral law of Holy Scripture, and God’s will that man’s morals
accompany him into his American citizenship. [In the Founders’ view, including Jefferson‘s
view, this law (called natural law by our founding fathers), was alluded to in
the founders’ founding documents. In their view, man’s rights (based on natural law) were
unalterable and of a higher order than a written law of man. Thus the Constitution confirmed the law and
secured the right and bound both individuals and government representatives to
a moral code.]
What is this natural law that Jefferson
so fiercely adhered to? Our forefathers
all looked to John Locke for that definition.
John Locke said, “The law of
Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as
others. The rules that they make for
man’s actions must...be conformable to the law of Nature — i.e. to the will of
God.” Jefferson
believed that the law of Nature was God’s Law, which was the will of God. He held with Locke on his definition of
natural law. There can be no question
regarding Jefferson’s beliefs on this matter.
Furthermore, Jefferson
advocated no real wall of separation in education between religion and
state-supported institutions of higher learning. Jefferson said, in his letter to Dr. Thomas
Cooper, of November 2, 1822, “In our village
of Charlottesville, there
is a good degree of religion with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church
or meeting-house. The courthouse is the common temple,
one Sunday in the month to each. Here,
Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in
hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others’
preachers and mix in society with perfect harmony. In our university you know there is no
Professorship of Divinity.”
Jefferson continues, “A handle
(point) has been made of this to disseminate an ideal that this is an
institution not merely of no religion but against all religion. Occasion
was taken at the last meeting of the visitors, to bring forward an idea
that might silence this calumny (malicious false charge)...In our annual report
to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public
establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of
encouraging the different sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship
of their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that
their students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our
library, and every other accommodation
we can give them, preserving, however, their independence of us and
each other...and by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass
of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize
their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality.” [So much for religious groups not meeting on
state university campuses or in public buildings! — Jefferson
was for this and instituted it in his university. Furthermore, he said charges made against him
that his institution was not just of no religion but was against all religion
were malicious lies!]
Interestingly, President Bush has been criticized
for talking to “we, the people” about his praying to God. Jefferson
said during his Presidency, “I offer my sincere prayers to the Supreme Ruler of
the Universe, that He may long preserve our country in freedom and
prosperity.” He said, “I shall need the
favor of that Being in whose hands we are, Who led our forefathers, as Israel
of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all
the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His
providence, and our riper years with His wisdom and power…”
Jefferson’s “wall of separation” was
non-interference of government into the church of God
— unlike the interference practiced by Lyndon Johnson and others (even by our
own U.S. Supreme Court). Jefferson worried about judicial activism too. He said, “It is a very dangerous doctrine to
consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional
questions. It is one which would place
us under the despotism of an oligarchy…. The Constitution has erected no such
single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions
of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments
coequal and cosovereign within themselves.”
[Obviously, Jefferson would not have
supported Marbury v. Madison. He
would not have believed that the supreme law of the land is its justices‘
decisions, but only the Constitution itself.
Jefferson was a strict constructionist;
he was not a judicial activist.]
The Johnson Amendment of 1954 is
unconstitutional!
The Johnson Amendment of 1954 is a direct violation
by the State of the rights of churches, pastors, and church members. It is in violation of the First Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution. It is the antithesis of Jefferson’s
true concept of a “wall of separation.”
The liberals’ Separation of Church and State View is not founded upon
the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and its
Bill of Rights, or even upon in the private writings of Jefferson himself. The only Jeffersonian view of “Separation of
Church and State” is that view that government must not interfere in religion
or in churches — in their establishment, in their religious free exercise, in
their free speech. The Johnson Amendment
must be repealed if individual rights are to be upheld and if the Constitution
— the law of the land — is to be obeyed.
The Remedy — HR 235 – The Houses
of Worship Political Speech Protection Act
HR 235, introduced by Representative Jones, if
ratified into law, will overturn the unconstitutional Johnson Amendment of 1954. The Johnson Amendment violates the free
speech of pastors and church members within their physical churches, and is
clearly the interference of general government into religion and its free
exercise, a violation of the most basic inalienable rights of man, attacking
freedom of religion in America and the free speech practices of both a majority
and [in some religious sects] a minority of its citizens. HR 235 must pass Congress in order to return
those stolen rights to us. At present,
the State is in violation of the U.S. Constitution, a lawbreaker, and a tyrant
over its religious citizens.
End ▬ The History of the 1954 Johnson Amendment,
It’s Relationship to Jefferson’s Wall of Separation View,
And Its Unconstitutional
Nature