Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Religious Tests

  • Constitution Sunday: Isaac Backus on Religion and the State, Slavery, and Nobility

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    February 4, 1788

    Some governmental systems are engines of tyranny. They may be dressed up as virtuous systems, ones that account for all members of society, but the consequences flowing from the system always speak louder than the rhetoric its leaders spout. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, in February 1788, Isaac Backus arose and spoke in favor of the draft Constitution as it accounted for and did not contain many features of a system that leads to tyranny.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: Reverend Daniel Shute on Religious Tests and Christian Belief

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention.

    January 31, 1788

    Reverend Daniel Shute rose at the convention to speak not for—but against—adding a religious test as a qualification for offices that the Constitution created. He opined that such tests “would be attended with injurious consequences to some individuals, and with no advantage to the whole.”

    (more…)