Will James Blaine’s Black Knight Live to Bite Again?

Anti-Catholic bigotry still shapes the fight for religious liberty.

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One of the most fundamental goals of the modern religious liberty movement can be summed up in two words—legal equality. The government should grant religious organizations, individuals, and programs the same rights and privileges it grants to their secular counterparts. The most fundamental goal of a late 19th-century American politician named James Blaine was religious discrimination. 

He capitalized on a wave of post-Civil War anti-Catholic fervor and proposed a now-infamous federal constitutional amendment that would have banned public funding for so-called “sectarian” institutions. His original proposed alteration to the First Amendment read: 

No state shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any state for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.

This language reads quite differently to modern eyes. Now, the phrase “religious sect” stands in for religious movements more broadly. Then, to put it bluntly, the phrase meant “the Catholic church.” Moreover, neither did the amendment truly mean cutting off public funding from religious expression. No, at that time in American history public institutions were often in the business of religious expression. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    I wonder if Mr. French, who is a little younger than I, remembers, perhaps subconsciously, the James G. Blaine was known in his own time as "the Plumed Knight." He was supposed to be all Yankee righteousness, but then it was revealed that he had an extramarital affair, with extant documentation. A doggerel I recall from high school history - I hate how that happens, when I can't remember my own kids' names half the time:

    Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine,
    Plumed Knight from the State of Maine,
    (Burn this letter).

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  2. Ann G

    We created public schools in an attempt to provide equality and it failed, leaving us now trying to pay for private schooling with public funds to achieve the goal. We sound like a society devolving into chaos.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Todd Baker

    The real tragedy here is the spinelessness of the Montana Legislature. It is their duty to rescind the Blaine Amendment in their state. I mean, they passed this scholarship tax-credit program to increase choice in their children's education. Given the vast majority of private schools are not secular, their intent had to be contra-Blaine Amendment. Instead of this silly end-around, grow a pair and take the issue head-on! I hate the way our statehouses prostrate themselves at the feet of the federal government and the judicial branch (unless the issue is marijuana, of course!)

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