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 Constitution of Pennsylvania 1776

    State Constitutions

Pennsylvania's original constitution like Maryland's and Delaware's acknowledges the generally held beliefs of the people who wrote it which is explicitly general but not denominational or sectarian Christianity. To them, founding their state on the principle's for human government and human relationships as found in tried and tested Biblical principles is not the "establishment" of religion.  This constitution lays out what they considered the establishment of religion as described in the commentary on the state constitutions page. Meaning; to them the establishment of religion is the state interfering in the growth of the government of God in the hearts of individuals that comes through Gospel of Jesus Christ. (As written in the New and Old Testaments.) That was their experience under the oppression of the King of England's imperil church and before that the imperial church of the Roman Empire. This state was to be founded by the best of standards individuals could hold within their hearts through the influence of heaven itself and not through the coercive nature of human government. In section 45 the states role is laid out in this. Not in the preaching of that Gospel or the advancement of the religion but in the enforcement of law.  The standard of law was much higher than the modern secularist and sexualist  like to have it. The guideline's are unambiguously in line with the morality that Jesus Christ himself and his apostles preached that were to be the fruit in the lives of peoples enlightened by the message in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In other words these peoples understood that vice and sexual immorality (and obviously other lawlessness) were in fact the enemies of the people, freedom and good\limited government. This also exposes the strategy of the modern leftist. Vice, sexual and other types of immorality are their most effective tools in their bid for political and eventual military domination. Not content to simply spread their corruption they seek to impose it with the force of law. Part of that strategy is the use of "law" to takeover, and\or the imposition of a public school system that censors the Christian heritage of the nation. That way when believers and like minded individuals resist their agenda they can be painted as "radicals" who seek to impose a "theocracy" like the  Roman Empire's imperial church on the nation. This becomes very easy for them to do because the publically educated people of the nation have nothing in their knowledge of the present or past to measure the accusations against. A case and point outside these glaringly obvious state constitutions themselves is who was the president of Pennsylvania's constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Franklin is one of two known Deists among the main founders of the nation. Therefore he along with Thomas Jefferson are held up by modern leftists as the epitome of what the nations founders believed, which according to them of course is humanistic secularism. Yet here the "Deist" Franklin was president of the convention that wrote the document below that if written today would be hysterically denounced by the modern left leaning politician and their allies in the media as expressesing the most "extreme" "right wing" "Christian vitriol" imaginable.

 

AWHEREAS all government ought to be instituted and supported for the security and protection of the community as such, and to enable the individuals who compose it to enjoy their natural rights, and the other blessings which the Author of existence has bestowed upon man; and…..

We, the representatives of the freemen of Pennsylvania, in general convention met, for the express purpose of framing such a government, confessing the goodness of the great Governor of the universe (who alone knows to what degree of earthly happiness mankind may attain, by perfecting the arts of government) in permitting the people of this State, by common consent, and without violence, deliberately to form for themselves such just rules as they shall think best, for governing their future society,

II. That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding: And that no man ought or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry, contrary to, or against, his own free will and consent: Nor can any man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship: And that no authority can or ought to be vested in, or assumed by any power whatever, that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner control, the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship.  

And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:
I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration. 
And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State. 

SECT. 45. Laws for the encouragement of virtue, and prevention of vice and immorality, shall be made and constantly kept in force, and provision shall be made for their due execution: And all religious societies or bodies of men heretofore united or incorporated for the advancement of religion or learning, or for other pious and charitable purposes, shall be encouraged and protected in the enjoyment of the privileges, immunities and estates which they were accustomed to enjoy, or could of right have enjoyed, under the laws and former constitution of this state. 

Passed in Convention the 28th day of September, 1776, and signed by their order. 

BENJ. FRANKLIN, Pres. 

To view the entire constitution follow this hyperlink.

 The Constitution of Pennsylvania 1776

 

Other pertinent documents concerning the founding of Pennsylvania from Yale Law Schools Avalon Project

An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery - Pennsylvania; March 1, 1780

Charter of Privileges Granted by William Penn, esq. to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Territories, October 28, 1701

Charter for the Province of Pennsylvania : February 28, 1681

Concessions to the Province of Pennsylvania - July 11, 1681

Frame of Government of Pennsylvania - May 5, 1682

Frame of Government of Pennsylvania - February 2, 1683

Frame of Government of Pennsylvania - November 1, 1696

© Daniel Martinovich 2002-2013

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