BLASPHEMY - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BLASPHEMYAuthored

The Law Mind • 1168 words

Definition

Blasphemy, as a legal concept, is the crime of speaking, writing, or otherwise expressing contempt, ridicule, or impious reproach directed at God, Jesus Christ, the Christian religion, or sacred texts, with the malicious intent to undermine religious reverence or to provoke public disorder. As a criminal offense, blasphemy was recognized under English common law and carried forward — unevenly — into American law after the Revolution.

In English law, the offense was defined as speaking matter relating to God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or the Book of Common Prayer, intended to wound the feelings of mankind, excite contempt and hatred against the established church, or promote immorality.

In American law, the offense was generally described as any oral or written reproach maliciously cast upon God, His name, attributes, or religion — though the American formulation increasingly required proof of malicious intent, distinguishing irreverent academic or theological inquiry from criminal utterance.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An act of irreverence or contempt toward a god or something considered sacred; also informally extended to disregard of any convention held inviolable.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An indignity offered to God in words, writing, or signs; impiously irreverent words addressed to or used in reference to God; also figuratively, calumny or abuse directed at anything held in high honor.

The gap between ordinary and legal meaning is meaningful in one direction: the legal offense was narrower than common usage suggests. Casual irreverence, theological dissent, or figurative slang was not necessarily criminal. The law — particularly American law — required malicious intent and typically confined the offense to attacks on the Christian God and scriptures specifically, not religion in general or other faiths. Common usage applies the word far more broadly.

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Common Confusion

Blasphemy is sometimes conflated with heresy, but the two are distinct. Heresy was an ecclesiastical offense — a matter for church courts — concerning doctrinal deviation by a believer from within. Blasphemy was a civil or criminal offense cognizable in secular courts, concerning public utterances that threatened social order or dishonored the Deity. In England, both could carry legal consequences, but through different mechanisms. In American law, heresy as a legal charge essentially disappeared after the Revolution; blasphemy survived longer but in attenuated form.

Blasphemy should also be distinguished from profanity and sacrilege. Profanity historically addressed irreverent use of sacred names or oaths in ordinary speech — a lesser offense. Sacrilege concerned violation of sacred places or objects. Blasphemy was the most serious of the three, directed at the character or existence of God himself.

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Why It Matters in Research

Blasphemy is a term that looks stable across historical sources but conceals significant doctrinal drift and constitutional transformation. Researchers must navigate several fault lines.

First, the English foundation is not the American law. Blackstone's definition — which dominated early American legal education and is reproduced across the historical dictionaries — rests on the premise that Christianity is part of the law of England. American courts borrowing from Blackstone had to grapple with whether that premise survived the First Amendment. Some early American courts, particularly in New England, assumed it did. Others, especially through the nineteenth century, reframed blasphemy as a public order offense rather than a theological one, punishable because of its tendency to breach the peace, not because Christianity had legal supremacy.

Second, malicious intent became the critical dividing line in American cases. The historical dictionaries reflect this emerging requirement — Rapalje & Lawrence stress "wantonly" and Bouvier stresses "malicious design" — but earlier sources do not. A researcher working with eighteenth-century sources will find a more absolute formulation that American courts gradually softened.

Third, the offense became constitutionally untenable over the twentieth century. State blasphemy statutes persisted on the books well into the twentieth century in several jurisdictions, but prosecutions became vanishingly rare after the mid-1800s, and courts increasingly treated surviving statutes as dormant or constitutionally suspect under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. By the late twentieth century, the offense had effectively ceased to exist as an enforceable American criminal charge. Researchers tracing a modern free-speech or religious liberty question must account for this collapse.

Fourth, Law Mind corpus users should note that the historical dictionaries were written during the period when blasphemy was still nominally operative law. Their definitions are descriptive of a functioning offense and carry no signal that the offense was in decline. The corpus therefore skews toward treating blasphemy as settled law; the researcher must supply the constitutional and historical trajectory independently.

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Historical Dictionary Support

The historical sources converge on the core description — contemptuous or impious speech against God or the Christian religion — but differ in framing and emphasis in instructive ways.

Burrill tracks the English common law definition most faithfully, citing Blackstone directly: "Christianity being part of the laws of England." This formulation was the theoretical foundation for the offense and was reproduced widely in early American legal writing, though it sat uneasily with the First Amendment from the start.

Bouvier and Black's (2nd Ed.) both incorporate the malicious intent element more explicitly, reflecting the American refinement. Bouvier's synthesis — describing blasphemy as "speaking evil of the Deity with an impious purpose to derogate from the divine majesty" — represents the transitional American position: the offense still exists, but it requires something more than doctrinal error or even irreverence.

Rapalje & Lawrence offer the most distinctly American formulation, noting that the rationale for punishing blasphemy was not theological supremacy but its tendency "to lessen the reverence of mankind for the Deity and the christian religion" — a public welfare framing. This reflects judicial efforts to make blasphemy prosecutions compatible with a formally secular constitutional order.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any treatment of the First Amendment tension. None grapples seriously with whether blasphemy statutes could survive constitutional scrutiny, a question that had already arisen in American courts by the time many of these entries were written. Researchers should treat these sources as reflecting the law's formal self-description, not its constitutional ceiling.

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Jurisdictional Note

Blasphemy laws were never uniform across American states. New England states, particularly Massachusetts and Connecticut, retained active blasphemy statutes the longest, reflecting their Puritan legal inheritance. Southern and western states largely did not prosecute blasphemy at common law or develop robust statutory frameworks. Several states retained blasphemy statutes on the books through the twentieth century, but these are widely understood to be unenforceable under current First Amendment doctrine.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Freedom of Religion and the Establishment Clause; Criminal Offenses Against Public Order and Morality; History of Common Law Crimes in American Jurisdictions.

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BLASPHEMYmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In English law. Blas- phemy is the offense of speaking matter re- lating to God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or the

BLASPHEMYmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In Criminal Law. To attribute to God that which is contrary to his nature, and does not belong to him, and to deny what does. A false reflection uttered with a malicious design of reviling God. Emlyn's Pref. to vol. 8, St. Tr.; 20 Pick. 244. An impious or profane speaking of God or of sacred things; reproachful, contempt- uous, or irreverent words uttered impiously against God or religion. Blasphemy cog- nizable by common law is defined by Black-

BLASPHEMYmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

stone to be "denying the being or provi- dence of God, contumelious reproaches of our Saviour Christ, profane scoffing at the Holy Scripture, or exposing it to contempt or ridicule;" by Kent as "maliciously re- viling God or religion." In general blasphemy may be described as consist- ing in speaking evil of of the the Deity with an impious purpose to derogate from the divine majesty, and to alienate the minds of others from the love and reverence of God. It is purposely using words con- cerning God calculated and designed to impair and destroy the reverence, respect, and confidence due to him as the intelligent igent creator, governor, and judge of the world. It embraces the idea of detrac- tion, when used towards the Supreme Being; as "calumny" usually carries the same idea when ap- plied to an individual. It is a wilful and malicious attempt to lessen men's reverence of God by deny- ing his existence, or his attributes as an intelligent creator, governor, and judge of men, and to prevent their having confidence in him as such; 20 Pick. 211, 212, per Shaw, C. J. The offence of publishing a blasphemous libel, and the crime of blasphemy, are in many respects technically distinct, and may be differently charged; yet the same act may, and often does, constitute both. The latter consists in blaspheming the holy name of God, by denying, cursing, or con- tumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government, or final judging of the world ; and this may be done by language orally uttered, which would not be a libel. But it is not the less blasphemy if the same thing be done by language written, printed, and published; although when done in this form it also constitutes the offence of libel; 20 Pick. 213, per Shaw, C. J.; Heard, Lib. & Sl. § 336. In most of the United States, statutes have been enacted against this offence; but these statutes are not understood in all cases to have abrogated the common law; the rule being that where the statute does not vary the class and character of an of- fence, but only authorizes a particular mode of proceeding and of punishment, the sanction is cumulative and the common law is not taken away. And it has been decided that neither these statutes nor the common-law doctrine is repugnant to the constitutions of those states in which the question has arisen; Heard, Lib. & Sl. § 343; 20 Pick. 206; 11 S. & R. 394; 8 Johns. 290; 4 Sandf. 156; 2 Harr. Del. 553; 2 How. 127. In England, all blasphemies against God, the Christian religion, the Holy Scriptures, and malicious revilings of the established church, are punishable by indictment; 1 East, Pl. Cr. 3; 1 Bish. Cr. L. 498; 5 Jur. 529. See 7 Cox, Cr. Cas. 79; 1 B. & C. 26; 2 Lew. 237. In France, before the 25th of September, 1791, it was a blasphemy, also, to speak against the holy virgin and the saints, to deny one's faith, to speak with impiety of holy things, and to swear by things sacred; Merlin, Répert. The law relating to blasphemy in that country was repealed by the code of 25th of September, 1791; and its present penal code, art. 262, enacts that any person who, by words or gestures shall commit any outrage upon objects of public worship, in the places designed or actually employed for the performance of its rites, or shall assault or insult the min- isters of such worship in the exercise of their functions, shall be fined from sixteen to five hundred francs, and be imprisoned for a period not less than fifteen days nor more than six months. The civil law forbade the crime of blas- phemy; such, for example, as to swear by the hair of the head of God; and it pun- ished its violation with death. Si enim contra homines factæ blasphemiæ impunitæ non relinquuntur, multo magis qui ipsum Deum blasphemant digni sunt supplicia sustinere. (For if slander against men is not left unpunished, much more do those deserve punishment who blaspheme God.) Nov. 77. 1. § 1. In Spain it is blasphemy not only to speak against God and his government, but to utter injuries against the Virgin Mary and the saints. Senen Vilanova y Mañes, Ma- teria Criminal, forense, Observ. 11, cap. 3, n. 1. See CHRISTIANITY.

BLASPHEMYn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

An indignity offered to God in words, writing, or signs; impiously irreverent words or signs addressed to, or used in reference to, God; speaking evil of God; also, the act of claiming the attributes or prerogatives of deity. Figuratively, of things held in high honor: Calumny; abuse; vilification. Punished for his blasphemy against learning. Bacon. A suffix or terminal formative, used principally in biological terms, and signifying growth, formation; as, bioblast, epiblast, mesoblast, etc.

blasphemynoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

An act of irreverence or contempt toward a god or toward something considered sacred; an impious act, utterance, view, etc. | An act of irreverence towards anything considered inviolable; the act of disregarding a convention.

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