Talk:First Amendment to the United States Constitution

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	First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
	First Amendment to the United States Constitution has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 10, 2004.
Article milestones Date Process Result June 17, 2004 Featured article candidate Promoted January 7, 2007 Featured article review Demoted May 4, 2013 Good article nominee Listed
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

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Wikipedia's claim that the First Amendment "...prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion" is a misleading paraphrase of the First Amendment's actual verbiage, which is Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

The Wikipedia version claims the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights does not allow religion to be regulated, which is the exact opposite to what the Founding Fathers had intended when they wrote that the government can't establish religion, which is why it is known as the Establishment Clause.

Case law throughout history has ruled against government-sponsored religion.

Suggested change:

The First Amendment "...prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion"

to

The First Amendment "...prevents the government from making laws respecting an establishment of religion" AndreaMastersEd (talk) 13:46, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just made this change since no one disagreed with your suggestion, and since you are obviously correct that there was a discrepancy with the First Amendment's actual text. I assume the prior version, which said it "regulates" an establishment of religion, was a typographical error Jameson Nightowl (talk) 06:07, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a mistake in the first paragraph. This bit doesn't make sense: "... prevents the government from making laws respecting an establishment of religion...". Needs to be changed to "prevents the government from making laws DISrespecting religion..." (or similar). 117.20.69.63 (talk) 22:43, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The wording is correct. In this case, "respecting" means in relation to or regarding. It means neither the federal government, nor any State or local government, can put any religion in a superior position to the secular. SMP0328. (talk) 05:22, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First sentence needs improvement

I don't think the current first sentence is good. It is too long when it could be more concise. It is attempting to include everything about the First Amendment when according to

How would you propose to re-write it? Jameson Nightowl (talk) 04:31, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't the first sentence just the text of the amendement, instead of this clumsy paraphrase of it? It is pretty short and easily understood, even though the implications showed somewhat more tricky. 2A01:E0A:1DC:4570:244F:4B9D:CDFF:495A (talk) 17:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

surely this has been extensively discussed among constitutional scholars, but doesn't show in the article (unless I missed the point? My bad if I did): what are the pros/cons/conditions_if_any for this to apply also to non-citizen? 2A01:E0A:1DC:4570:244F:4B9D:CDFF:495A (talk) 17:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]