The following is part of my series of letters on updating and further strengthening the Bill of Rights in order to better protect such rights.
Previous letters have touched on the Second and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution. This letter will focus on the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment and a proposed amending that is based on a more extensive amendment of mine that has appeared in previous letters to the editor. That more extensive amendment can be added in as the 28th amendment to the constitution or placed in an appendix section to the constitution for more detailed guidance for legislators and judges. The proposed amendment listed below the current text of the First Amendment is a more abbreviated version.
Text of the current First Amendment freedom of religion clause: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Revised First Amendment freedom of religion clause: Congress, the state legislatures and local assemblies shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion(s), irreligion, mysticism, cult of personality or militant state atheism as an official collective creed, mandated form of worship or preferred practice for all within their territorial jurisdictions, or making the institutions of church and state an indistinguishable whole, or making one institution a servant or master of the other, or compelling tithing or other forms of involuntary aid to houses of worship, or inflicting persecution and prejudice upon targeted populations because of their beliefs or disbelief, or forcing conversion from one faith to another or to no faith at all or vice versa, or prohibiting or unduly curtailing the people from the free exercise thereof in their homes, houses of worship or elsewhere according to the dictates of individual conscience.
I would urge readers to contact their elected officials in Congress and urge adoption of this amendment to further strengthen religious liberty.
Further letters on this particular subject will follow in future letters to the editor.
