Pastors smeared for telling the First Amendment truth

There is a price in smear to taking a stand against revisionist history, as a group of moderate to liberal clergy - members of the Texas Faith Network - did recently.

Jonathan Saenz, , a lawyer/lobbyist for Liberty Institute (the Texas affiliate of the far-right Focus on the Family), quickly accused the group had used their press conference "to personally attack the Christian faith of some State Board of Education members." Although he didn't explain how that occurred, he did correctly report that they support separation of church and state. They said, for example:

“Our Founding Fathers understood that the best way to protect religious liberty in America is to keep government out of matters of faith,” said the Rev. Roger Paynter, pastor of Austin’s First Baptist Church. “But this state board appears hostile to teaching students about the importance of keeping religion and state separate, a principle long supported in my own Baptist tradition and in other faiths.”

False history is typically cited to support the Texas board's hostility, Saenz's and that of his allies. To wit, Dave Welch of the arch conservative Pastor Council issued a press release which, among other things, said:

“The Northwest Ordinance, passed in 1787 by the same Congress which presented the Bill of Rights for ratification, declared that ‘Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.’”

He's just wrong.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed by the Congress seated under the Articles of Confederation.

More than two years later, first federal Congress under the Constitution sent the Bill of Rights to the states for ratification. And of course included the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights -- the one which forbids government from either promoting or disfavoring religion.