The First Amendment had a tough week in North Carolina.

In personal relationships, “no” means “No.”  Not with the First Amendment which begins “Congress shall make no law …”

In Supreme Court-speak, “No” means “not too much” or “not too offensive.”

The First Amendment covers speech, religion, the press, and the right to assemble and petition government for grievances. For more than 200 years, Congress and the courts have wrestled with what is and is not permissible for the word “No.”

Our Founding Fathers,  including our first four presidents — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison – risked their lives to escape religion-dominated governments. They enshrined these fears in the First Amendment, erecting a wall between religion and government. In recent years, an increasingly religious fervor has been chipping away at that wall as religion digs deeper into government.

Rowan County commissioners decided to appeal the federal court decision prohibiting them from praying in legislative session. For over two centuries, legislative prayer was permissible if non-sectarian.  Over the past 30 years, legislators have attempted to insert Christianity into the legislative process.

The courts have been rather consistent: simply put (though admittedly complex) legislators cannot be the prayer-givers and prayers cannot promote one religion over another. Yet Rowan County commissioners insist on being the prayer-givers using their deeply held Christian beliefs.

On a parallel track, North Carolina’s legislature is the boy with his finger in the leaking dike, trying to hold back the wave of sexual orientation neutrality. It overrode the governor’s veto to pass a law permitting judicial officers who disagree with a law on religious grounds to not follow it.

Of the world’s population, 45 percent are Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, and 32 percent are Christian, but 75 percent of U.S. citizens are Christian. Jews make up less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the worldwide and Rowan County populations.

(For the record, I am Jewish, the smallest minority religion on earth. I could have been a plaintiff in the prayer lawsuit but chose not to because, I’m ashamed to admit, being “offended,” the required legal standard, just happens to minorities like me.)

In today’s geopolitical world, Christians (and Jews) are engaged in a holy war against religious extremists without the convenient borders and monogrammed uniforms that nations at war have. Some extremists believe their god allows, even instructs, them to kill disbelievers. What if their god is right? Though unfathomable, they believe it with the same fervor Christians believe Jesus is the route to salvation.

Most American political candidates must declare fealty to Christianity. Somehow, conservatives have embraced as their own a long-haired barefoot hippie who preached peace and love, opposed the rich, sought health care and food for the poor, and believed in forgiveness rather than harsher punishments. Laying claim to the Jesus-mantle, some conservatives frame liberals, who are actually more Jesus-like, as infidels.

Rowan County commissioners and North Carolina legislators are driven by their sincere belief that Christianity guides them to the best political solutions.  Imagine a Muslim (or a burka-covered woman) legislator kneeling on a prayer mat seeking divine political guidance. Or a yoga-style cross-legged Buddhist judge reciting a mantra to determine whether or not to marry a “different” couple.

The irony (or hypocrisy) is that conservative legislators, who passed a law allowing judicial officers to opt out of their lawful duty if they disagree with the law on religious grounds, are the same conservatives who decry “activist judges.”

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is often quoted, “My job is to call balls and strikes.”  Yet, his court has been the most activist in half a century in changing civil rights, voting rights, campaign financing, labor and health care laws.

In the movie “Moonstruck,” one brother breaks up with his fiancé and the other immediately asks her to marry him. The grandfather starts crying. The mom asks, “What’s wrong?”  He sobs, “I’m confused.”

Me too. Is a majority religion best for everyone?  Does “No” mean “Yes, as long as you agree with my religion?” It’s a First Amendment conundrum.

David Post lives in Salisbury.