A fan of the American Family Association I have never been. But even I was quite startled earlier to read a report in the San Francisco that the AFA believes the First Amendment applies only to Christians:

Perry’s audience Saturday was filled with people who sang with arms outstretched in prayer — and wept — as Christian groups played music on stage. And Perry, himself, huddled on the stage in a prayer circle with several ministers who helped lead the event. It was Perry’s idea and was financed by the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group that opposes abortion and gay rights and believes that the First Amendment freedom of religion applies only to Christians.

Huh?

Is the AFA really that batshit crazy? As the above was in the San Francisco Chronicle, I thought I would google the language. That same charge against the AFA appears 3700 times, including this Fox News report:

“With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God’s help,” Perry said in a June video when he announced the event, which is being called The Response USA. “That’s’ why I’m calling on Americans to pray and fast, like Jesus did and as God called the Israelites to do in the book of Joel.”

The rally is financed by The American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss.-based group that opposes abortion and gay rights and believes that the First Amendment freedom of religion applies only to Christians.

It is one thing to call on Americans to pray and fast, but when you’re doing that while being sponsored by a group that apparently regards the First Amendment with such unbridled contempt, it raises questions.

What  I would like to know is whether the AFA really believes that freedom of religion only applies to Christians. If they do, it makes their opposition to abortion and homosexuality pale by comparison.

I mean, I can handle a coalition between libertarians and social conservatives, but it’s tough to have a coalition with people if they don’t believe in basic constitutional principles, or the plain language of the Constitution.

Apparently the AFA really does believe that the First Amendment applies only to Christians. AFA’s Bran Fischer “explains“:

It was written for one specific purpose: to protect the free exercise of the Christian religion.

[...]

When the Founders used the word “religion,” they used it much as we did on the playground when I was growing up in America a generation ago. We’d asked each other, “What religion are you?” By the term “religion” we meant some variety or brand of the Christian religion, since that was all that was represented among us. We were Baptists, or Lutherans, or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Catholics, etc. The question essentially had to do with what brand of Christianity you wore. Such was the case at the time of the Founding.

Of course things are different today, due to our inane obsession with culture-destroying muliticulturalism, but the point here is to determine the meaning and intention of the First Amendment as given to us by the Founders, lest we lapse into the kind of judicial activism and whackery that has given us abortion and pornography and same-sex marriage on demand.

I guess Fischer must have gone to Jew-free schools and never read George Washington’s letter to the Jews. If contemporary customs at the time of the founding dictate constitutional meaning, then perhaps the Second Amendment only applies to guns in the hands of white men.

Bear in mind that in defining “Christianity” for First Amendment purposes, the AFA does not include Christian sects of which it disapproves.  The First Amendment only applies to Christian sects within the “stream of historic Christianity.” Meaning not Mormons (and probably not Unitarians or Rainbow Baptists).

Clearly, then, as our political experiment with the Mormon faith makes clear, there is no guarantee of the free exercise of religion for religions which are outside the stream of historic Christianity, as Mormonism is. (It denies the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, the unique deity of Christ, his all-sufficient atoning sacrifice on the cross, and the completeness of God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments.)

Hmmm… I guess if freedom of religion does not apply to Mitt Romney, Perry’s love affair with the AFA becomes understandable.

Whether it’s presidential will be up to the voters.

Share