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NH-CONSTITUTION-006-Morality+Piety-www_MarekBennett_com

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Article 6. [Morality and Piety.] As morality and piety, rightly grounded on high principles, will give the best and greatest security to government, and will lay, in the hearts of men, the strongest obligations to due subjection; and as the knowledge of these is most likely to be propagated through a society, therefore, the several parishes, bodies, corporate, or religious societies shall at all times have the right of electing their own teachers, and of contracting with them for their support or maintenance, or both. But no person shall ever be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination. And every person, denomination or sect shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect, denomination or persuasion to another shall ever be established.

June 2, 1784
Amended 1968 to remove obsolete sectarian references.
SOURCE = NH State Constitution / “Bill of Rights” 

This one packs a lot into a single article, but it helps explain why public schools and other state institutions should not celebrate one religion’s holidays to the exclusion of others. (This has not always been the case in New Hampshire; see stories like: “Welcome to New Hampshire”)…

2 June, 1784


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