Mickey Dollens: NH amendment would make non-evangelicals second-class citizens

New Hampshire proudly calls itself the “Live Free or Die” state. However, a proposed constitutional amendment would move the state in the opposite direction.

CACR 28, assigned to the Education Policy Administration Committee and sponsored by Reps. Julius Soti, Matt Sabourin dit Choiniere, John Sellers and Kelley Potenza, would rewrite Article 6 of New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights to declare that morality must be “rightly grounded on evangelical principles.” It would also empower towns to fund “public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality.”

Such language calls to mind the warning by James Madison, father of our secular Constitution, in his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance.” When in the Virginia General Assembly, he passionately denounced a proposal for taxpayers to furnish “a provision for teachers of the Christian religion.” Madison wrote: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?” Even back in 1785, this very bad idea was defeated.

The amendment goes even further by granting constitutional protections specifically to “every denomination of Christians.” This means that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those who hold no religious beliefs would receive fewer protections under the state Constitution than their Christian neighbors.

The bill’s own legislative analysis makes this explicit, stating that Christians would receive “additional religious protections under the constitution beyond those granted to other religions.”

Beyond the constitutional violations, CACR 28 is also impractical and fiscally irresponsible.

Towns would face costly lawsuits if they tried to implement CACR 28. The result would be confusion, court battles and an unconstitutional provision that exists on paper but cannot function in practice.

There is also history here that the sponsors appear to have overlooked. In 1968, New Hampshire amended this very article to remove what lawmakers at the time called “obsolete sectarian references.” CACR 28 would reverse that progress and pull the Granite State backward.

This is especially dismaying in a state often ranked among the least religious in the country. An estimated 48% of New Hampshire residents identify as religiously unaffiliated. Adding the 5% who belong to non-Christian faiths, this shows that Christians are a minority in New Hampshire. Further, it would turn evangelical Protestants, at 10% of the population, into the favored class. Catholics, non-evangelical Protestants, and other non-evangelical Christians at 37%, far outnumbering evangelicals, would also become persona non grata. Under this outrageous amendment, all non-evangelical Christians and non-Christians would be relegated to second-class citizenship while their tax dollars are used to fund evangelical Protestant religious teachers they do not support.

Some bills die hard, but this one should be an easy takedown.

•••

Mickey Dollens is the regional government affairs manager at the FFRF Action Fund, where he fights to uphold state/church separation and protect religious freedom for all.