The Ratification of the Constitution by David Barton

For 150 years following the ratification of the Constitution, States were considered the highest authority on any dispute involving the issues within the Bill of Rights. Only under unusual circumstances would a case involving those freedoms reach the federal courts. In fact, the Holy Trinity Court noted that federal courts rarely ruled on controversies involving religion. Therefore, since federal courts were less of an authority on these issues, they frequently cited State Supreme Court decisions as their authority as did the Court in Holy Trinity.

Only since the Court’s federalization of the States in the mid-twentieth century have State Supreme Courts been viewed as subordinate to the federal courts. It will be helpful to recall this when reviewing the following cases. Updegraph v. the Commonwealth, 1824 Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. This was the first case cited in Holy Trinity, and the facts of the case were described in the grand jury’s indictment: Abner Updegraph not having the fear of God before his eyes contriving and intending to scandalize and bring into disrepute and vilify the Christian religion and the scriptures of truth in the presence and hearing of several persons did unlawfully, wickedly and pre-meditatively, despitefully and blasphemously say :

“That the Holy Scriptures were a mere fable: that they were a contradiction, and that although they contained a number of good things, yet they contained a great many lies.” To the great dishonor of Almighty God and to the great scandal of the profession of the Christian religion. Updegraph, indicted under the State law against blasphemy, was found guilty by the jury; that verdict was appealed.

Since the central question revolved around the issue of blasphemy, the court needed to establish a legal definition of that word. It therefore turned to the writings of the foremost legal authority of the day: William Blackstone. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws, introduced in 1766, became the law book of the Founding Fathers. 8 In fact, so strong was its influence in America that Thomas Jefferson once quipped that American lawyers used Blackstone’s with the same dedication and reverence that Muslims used the Koran. It was therefore logical that the court should turn to this source to establish the legal definition of “blasphemy”:

Blasphemy against the Almighty is denying His being or Providence or uttering contumelious insulting reproaches on our Savior Christ. It is punished at common law by fine and imprisonment, for Christianity is part of the laws of the land. By the legal definition, Updegraph had clearly violated the law. His attorney, however, argued that his conviction should be overturned for two reasons: Updegraph was a member of a debating association which convened weekly, and what he said had been uttered in the course of an argument on a religious question; that both the State and federal Constitution protected freedom of speech, and that if any State law against blasphemy did exist, the federal Constitution had done away with it; Christianity was no longer part of the law. Undoubtedly, defense arguments would differ little today.