SCMT, no. It is defined by both the text of the Constitution and the ORIGINAL INTENT of the people who wrote it and the States that ratified it. Constitutional interpretation is at least as much the job of the historian as it is the lawyer.

There is a name for the “living and breathing” constitutional jurisprudence that you describe. It’s called liberalism.

“Interpretive tradition” is not irrelevant, but it is secondary to text and original intent. It is appealed to after these, never before. And interpretive tradition can never trump them.

Thomas, it doesn’t matter what the electorate “accepts.” What matters is what the Constitution authorizes. If the electorate thinks it should authorize more then they should bother to amend it.

I get what you are saying and agree with much of it. And I do think it is sometimes the case that Constitutionalists allow the cart (strictly following the Constitution) to get ahead of the horse (conserving our civilization). (Especially libertarian Constitutionalists whose highest value is freedom vs. conservative Constitutionalist whose highest value is preservation.) One could also criticize the Constitution from an anti-Federalist standpoint. But strict construction and originalism are simply not negotiable conservative positions. (They are negotiable libertarian positions because constitutionalism for the libertarian is a position of convenience.) To abandon them is to abandon a significant part of what we are trying to conserve.

It is a quintessentially liberal position to venerate the American Republic as the simple product of the Enlightenment that it is, because it is the quintessentally liberal position to venerate the Enlightenment just as it stands.

The conservative position is to test the Enlightenment and its legacy, including to destruction where necessary, by reference to the whole Western tradition and (judged according to that tradition) the whole of human wisdom, and thus to recognize as part of that tradition and of that wisdom those parts which pass that test. And the Western tradition is fundamentally and ultimately the Christian recapitulation of the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans.

The American Republic is a key part of the Enlightenment and its legacy, as are the writings of the Founding Fathers.

And the Founding Fathers were not particularly religious on average. The late 18th century was quite a secular time in both Britain and America. Church attendance was very low. Among the Fathers (and early presidents) you find a disproportionate number of deists and Unitarians. This was occasionally an issue in politics then, as John Adams accused Jefferson of atheism in the 1800 election.

Of course, this situation was largely reversed in the US (and somewhat UK) by the time of the American Civil War. (Formal) religiosity comes in waves.

David’s point entirely stands, even if it challenges the National Myth that the Founding Fathers took orders directly from God and wrote the fifth Gospel.