On his radio broadcast yesterday, Bryan Fischer spent two segments laying out his argument that, when the founders of this nation used the word “religion,” what they really meant was “Christianity.” As such, authorities in Oklahoma have every right to reject an effort by Satanists to erect a monument outside the Oklahoma Capitol building next to a monument of the Ten Commandments, Fischer said, because the Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion was never intended to protect anything other than Christianity.
“If by ‘religion,'” Fischer said, “the founders, and the founders of the state of Oklahoma, meant Christianity, then you can ban a monument to Satan because that’s not Christianity … You can say ‘no, we’re not going to let you do it. Our Constitution protects the free exercise of the Christian religion; yours is not a Christian expression, we’re not going to have that monument.’ If we don’t understand the word ‘religion’ to mean Christianity as the founders intended it, then we have no way to stop Islam, we have no way to stop Satanism, we have no way to stop any other sort of sinister religion practice that might creep onto the fruited plains”:
