Moore

Kramnick

In 1787, the year the U.S. Constitution was written, 11 of the 13 states' constitutions required that state office holders be Protestant Christians. In what might be seen as a paradox, 11 of those same original states barred ministers from holding public office. The American colonies, like England and the countries of continental Europe, were accustomed to including religious tests in the formal rules of governments. The U.S. Constitution, fearfully described by many of its opponents as a godless document, tried to end this practice for the new federal government. Article Six states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

In the course of the next 150 years, most of the individual states wrote similar provisions into their constitutions. And when they did not, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. In Torasco v. Watkins, a unanimous court in 1961 declared that Maryland had unconstitutionally barred a justice of the peace from taking office because he did not believe in God. And in 1978, a ruling in McDaniel v. Paty, the court told the State of Tennessee that it could not bar a minister from being a delegate to the state constitutional convention.

American voters are, of course, free to ignore Article Six and the Supreme Court when they cast their ballots. For a long time in the United States, Catholics had no chance of being elected president. Today Jews and Mormons may stand a chance, but the odds against them suggest that political parties will find other candidates. To be Muslim or even to be suspected of being Muslim, is death to a presidential ambition. And, of course, atheists need not apply.

On this Constitution Day (Sept. 17) at the beginning of another campaign for the presidency, we may regret the informal religious test imposed by American voters, yet at the same time recognize that such is their right in a democracy. What is not okay, however, is the fact that seven states still retain in their constitution a clause similar to Article 19 of the Arkansas Constitution: "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in court." The language is accompanied sometimes by an explicit denial that the clause constitutes a religious test. A religion test, that is, only requires that you do not discriminate against people of different religions and does not apply to people who have no religion.

Torasco v. Watkins said otherwise, and in view of that ruling, we may ask whether the anachronistic clauses in seven state constitutions make any difference. Atheists face far greater obstacles to any political aspirations they might hold than the stubbornness of states that refuse to remove language that has been declared null and void. Our answer, however, is that it does make a difference. If written language means anything, it will continue to influence the thinking of people who are forced to read it. That includes schoolchildren who in studying their state constitutions discover that believing in God is a requirement of full participation in our civil society. It would be far better to have them read the words of Thomas Jefferson: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Isaac Kramnick is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, and R. Laurence Moore is the H.A. Newman Professor of American Studies and History, both at Cornell. They are co-authors of "The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State" (Norton, 2005).