Has anyone ever taken legal steps to change the Constitution’s separation of church and state?
The current assaults on the constitutional separation of church and state by the religious Right are only the latest round in a longstanding battle to undo what the framers did. There have been many attempts to amend the Constitution to “correct” its omission of God. The most important of these took place during the Civil War, when a group of Protestant ministers proposed to President Abraham Lincoln that the Constitution be amended to acknowledge the governmental authority not only of God in general but of Jesus Christ specifically. The proposal would have replaced “We the People…” with “Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land….” Lincoln cannily responded by promising to “take such action upon it as my responsibility to my Maker and our country demands.” His action, for which posterity must thank him, was to take no
