Blasphemy

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 198

Page 198

Defaming religion by any words expressing scorn, ridicule, or vilification of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Old or New Testament, or Christianity, constitutes the offense of blasphemy. In the leading American case, Commonwealth v. Kneeland (1838), Chief Justice LEMUEL SHAW of Massachusetts repelled arguments based on FREEDOM OF THE PRESS and on RELIGIOUS LIBERTY when he sustained a state law against blasphemy and upheld the conviction of a pantheist who simply denied belief in God, Christ, and miracles. In all the American decisions, the courts maintained the fiction that the criminality of the words consisted of maliciousness or the intent to insult rather than mere difference of opinion.

The Supreme Court has never decided a blasphemy case. In BURSTYN, INC. V. WILSON (1951) the Court relied on FREEDOM OF SPEECH to void a New York statute authorizing the censorship of "sacrilegious" films. Justice FELIX FRANKFURTER, concurring, observed that blasphemy was a far vaguer term than sacrilege because it meant "criticism of whatever the ruling authority of the moment established as the orthodox religious doctrine." In 1968, when the last prosecution of blasphemy occurred in the United States, an appellate court of Maryland held that the prosecution violated the First Amendment's ban on ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION and its...