Editor, Times-Union: The following is my eighth letter in my series of letters to the editor on the various positions that one’s government can have on religious liberty. This particular letter in this series will list a proposed constitutional amendment that would further strengthen legal protection of religious liberty and a highly recommended reading list for further information. Proposed constitutional amendment concerning freedom of religion: Neither Congress, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, the president and his or her Cabinet, the federal bureaucracies; nor the executive, legislative, judicial or bureaucratic branches of the government of the various states, counties, localities and territories of the Union; nor a powerful minority or majority of the voting American public; nor a foreign power, foreign alliance, and international or transnational authority shall infringe upon during peacetime or war the inalienable rights of the inhabitants and citizens of the United States and its territories or of foreigners residing here or abroad to peacefully, openly, freely, and with respect for legitimate laws and the rights of others; profess belief in the supernatural or no belief at all, to profess the tenets of one’s faith or the opinion and reasons for one’s independence from organized faith, to engage in the practice of a religion of one’s own choosing or no religion at all, and to be free from acts of persecution, forced conversion, intrusion into the internal affairs of ones congregation, denomination, or faith and the incremental or outright establishment of a universal state church/state religion or militant state atheism. Recommended reading list: 1. Everson v. Board of Education - U.S. Supreme Court (1947) 2. The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic (1986) 3. The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom (1998) 4. The Story of American Freedom (1998) 5. Uncivil Religion: Interreligious Hostility in America (1987) 6. Political Systems of the World: Theocracy (2008) 7. When Religion Becomes Evil (2002) 8. Handbook of Denominations in the United States (1990) 9. The Encyclopedia of Active New Religions, Sects, and Cults Revised Edition (1998) 10. The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds First Edition (1988) 11. Communities of Dissent: A History of Alternative Religions in America (2003) 12. The Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2008) 13. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2007) 14. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series: Roman Catholicism in America (1999) 15. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series: Protestantism in America (2002) 16. World Religions: Protestantism Third Edition (2009) 17. The Encyclopedia of Protestantism (2005) 18. Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (2006) 19. Declaration of Independence (1776) 20. A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1777) 21. Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785) 22. Virginia Declaration of Rights 23. Constitution of the United States The remaining letters in this particular series will give a little more background on the issue of separation of church and state. Alexander Houze Leesburg
