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Religious Toleration Written as First Founding Principle of South Dakota’s Compact with the United States

My conversation yesterday with Senator Jim Bolin (R-16/Canton) about foundational governing principles led me to review our state constitution. My reading reminded me of what one could argue is the most foundational of principles in our state constitution (certainly more foundational than the provision for craps and keno) is Article 23, our Compact with the United States. Without this article, we would not exist as a state.

In Article 23, our founders made a deal with the United States to do a variety of things and not do others. But here is the very first thing they/we promised:

First. That perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and that no inhabitant of this state shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship [South Dakota Constitution, Article 23, 1889].

Perfect toleration. No inhabitant. Ever be molested. That’s absolute language making clear that our state starts with religious tolerance for everyone of every mode of worship (and I’m ready to contend that “mode of worship” includes mode zero, not worshipping).

And remember: toleration means leaving people alone, letting them do their thing, not employing public resources to promote one preferred belief over another.

As I like to say about religions, smoke ’em if you got ’em. If you like your religion, go ahead and practice it. If you don’t like someone else’s religion, don’t go to their temple. Just don’t come looking for public subsidies for your faith or using your religion as a sign of superior qualification for public office. That’s against the first founding principle of South Dakota’s very existence.

7 Comments

  1. Donald Pay

    Patrick Garry wrote a book on the history of the SD Constitution. I haven’t read it, but I’ve read a few other articles on the subject. It’s interesting that SD could have been accepted as a state earlier, but partisan politics got in the way. It’s also interesting to note that the Republican Party was the progressive party back then. Progressivism is at the heart of the South Dakota Constitution.

    One thing that I wonder about is whether the amendments that passed (in the 1970s) that reorganized the executive branch wasn’t the start of and the cause of South Dakota’s subsequent corruption problems. That reorganization concentrated the power of the executive, and reduced citizen control.

  2. leslie

    JFK shot, Nixon impeached. The Southren Strategy hatched. Kneip introduced the cabinet concept for the executive office in the 70s. Then Janklow happened. Reagan happened. The vast Right Wing conspiracy was born (again). Almost 40 years of conflict now. Same track as religious opp of Roe V. Wade. Must study Garry.

  3. Interesting question, Donald. Those amendments all came from the Legislature, right? Did they have strong support from either party?

  4. John

    Much of early South Dakota law came from . . . drum roll . . . more drum roll . . . California. Why? Economic development. Mining. Think 49niners, Days of ’76, Hearst (who made it big in the CA gold mines) (then Homestake), South Dakota had an immediate need for the rule of law and law covered mining law, property, and water rights. Amazing the state’s founders used the amazing “t” word in Article 23 to tolerate religion. The catholics and near-catholic lutherans must still be roiling for they, like all zealots, pretend having ‘the one true religion.’

    Yet as DP wrote, now SD really has but 2 and a quarter or 2 and one-half branches of government. The legislature is toothless. No one in the executive or judiciary fears or respects the legislature. We’ve had legislative members tell us they haven’t seen corruption in Pierre – through their willful blindness.

    Thanks for the note and comments.

  5. grudznick

    Mr. John, you are indeed correct that nobody fears or respects the legislatures. The legislatures brought that upon theirownselfs. Moron, most would say. With a partisan staff that fails regularly and a director that controls their every move who is inept. That, Mr. John, is the way the legislatures “work.”

    I don’t blame Mr. Novstrup, for he tries to fix this stuff. I blame that director fellow. And Ms. Wismer, and Mr. whazzisname. That guy.

  6. Donald Pay

    Someone help me out here. I believe there was supposed to be a Legislative Reorganization Amendment in the 1970s, too, but it didn’t pass. The reason it didn’t pass, I believe, is that they screwed around with the initiative and referendum, and the people voted it down mostly for that reason.

    One thing I do know is that the South Dakota Legislature, for all of its problems, does require that every bill that’s introduced gets a hearing. Committee chairs can’t refuse to hear testimony on bills that are referred to his or her committee. That is a great thing, a real plus for the citizens. It is not common in other states where committee chairs are like demigods and can squash any bill by not bringing it up. Yes, sometimes the committee hearings can be just pro forma exercises where legislators don’t really listen. That is something that needs to improve, but at least people can testify at one hearing, at minimum, and provide their information to the Legislature.

  7. Donald Pay

    John’s information is probably right as far as it goes. I don’t think there was much to mining law, though, before the early 1980s. Whitewood Creek was poisoned by Homestake, so there couldn’t have been very effective laws.

    I remember there were some pretty weak statutes and pretty incompetent boards and nonexistent enforcement before the changes in the 1980s. I don’t think the boards have gotten much better. When the Black Hills Alliance lawyers were involved in fighting the uranium issue in the late 1970s, there was almost nothing, and there were boards and agencies staffed by people with no expertise at all. The Legislature used Colorado’s laws as a jumping off point for the first swing at mining law, and there was an interim committee in the early 80s that proposed sweeping changes. Those changes passed but proved too weak, so there were changes made from the late 1980s through the 1990s.

    Water law I believe was put into effect even before South Dakota became a state. Souoth Dakota did adopt most of western water law, developed in California and other western states where mining and irrigation held a lot of power and where water was often limited. Western water law had beginnings in the Spanish-era in the southwest.

    But the SD Constitution has borrowed from Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania Constitutions from what I remember from an article I read by Garry.

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