The Wall of Separation Between Church and State

The Founding Fathers wrote the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment, and its original intent is quite different from the way some progressive scholars claim. The Founders never imagined one day the clause would be used as “a weapon against Christianity.”

And let’s state from the start that Thomas Jefferson’s figure of speech “wall of separation between church and state” — does not appear in the U.S. Constitution or in any of America’s founding documents, but only in the fecundity of memoranda of ACLU lawyers and court rulings of activist judges.

Freedom of Religion Spearheaded in New Jersey and Virginia  

The U.S. Constitution grants American citizens freedom of religion — not proscription of religion from private or public life. The enumerated rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights secure individual liberties and limit the power of government. Why should the “free exercise thereof” clause be any different?

The American founders correctly rejected not only the formation of a theocracy but also the establishment of an official religion like in Great Britain, the nation from which they separated. Even though the founders were sons of the Enlightenment, they decried the exclusion of other Judeo-Christian denominations for the benefit of the Anglican Church.

Beginning in the late 1760s through the 1780s, Calvinist opposition to an official state religion developed in New Jersey around Elizabethtown and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The opposition was led by Presbyterian leaders John Witherspoon (1723–1794), Elias Boudinot (1740–1821), and William Livingston (1723–1790).

Southern Founders, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in Virginia, agreed, and were firmly opposed to the establishment of a state-supported, official religion or church for the United States. The Founders strongly concurred in freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

Official State Religions in the English and Scottish Experience

The phrase “a wall of separation” in church and state affairs is derived from the query of the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801, regarding the establishment of a religious denomination, sent to Thomas Jefferson, the newly elected President of the United States. Jefferson responded: “…I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Jefferson’s private opinion is perhaps the strongest among the founders and has been used repeatedly by activist judges as if the phrase was contained in the U.S. Constitution to ban religion from public life. And yet, the phrase refers only to the official forbiddance of the establishment of a state religion, and not to a ban on religion in public life, much less an encroachment on religious liberty.

The Founders were well aware of what a state religion meant in Great Britain, where the head of state, the king, was the head of the Church of England; where the monarch appointed bishops; where the House of Lords composed of Temporal Lords (i.e., the nobility) and the Spiritual Lords (i.e., Bishops and Archbishops) ruled as the Upper House; where all citizens, including Catholics, Puritans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and other Dissenters, pay taxes for the Church of England; where Catholics could not even hold public office and were persecuted, including the Irish Catholics in their own country!  

Winston Churchill, although a great apologist of the Anglican Church wrote that as far back as the Reformation and the reign of Henry VIII and his bigamous marriage to Anne Boleyn, “the clergy were prohibited from preaching unless licensed, and a Bidding prayer was prescribed for use in all Churches of England… ‘Henry VIII being immediately next unto God…’ ” And Catholics continued to be excluded from holding office and persecuted in Great Britain until the advent of the Catholic emancipation process in the 19th Century and Irish home rule in the 20th Century.

America’s Founders were also familiar with the historic situation in Scotland during the Reformation and before the Act of Union with Great Britain. The Presbyterian Church led by John Knox (1514-1572) had ruled as a virtual theocracy, enforced conformity throughout the land, persecuted Catholics, burned heretics, and had even manipulated the effective deposition of Mary Queen of Scotts (1542-1587), who ended up losing her head to Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess (r. 1558-1603). The Founders with historic insight and good reason wanted no repetition of this kind of experience in America!

Secularism and Societal Decay

The Founders were aware that the Judeo-Christian faith supported the moral code and ordered liberty. They recognized the value of religion upon morality and society, and thus, they guaranteed religious freedom as one of the first Natural Rights enshrined in the First Amendment.

Over the years, jettisoning the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded, coupled with the growth of government in private and public lives, society underwent rapid decay. Children paid the price particularly in the public school system. Today, many of America’s youth are growing up devoid of a moral compass, discipline, and lacking a desire to learn, which is reflected in poor academic performance, alienation, and increasing rates of illegitimacy, illiteracy, hooliganism, and serious crime.

Adults worry about children with guns, violence in schools, and street crime. Americans wonder why there is so much immorality, crime and broken families. The disintegration of the moral fabric of society has been the result of the vanishing of a religious life concomitant with loss of moral principles; and it has led increasingly to a lack of discipline, self-respect, moral restraint, and societal decay.

School prayer and the Ten Commandments were removed from public schools and most public places. Should Americans also extirpate such phrases as “God Bless America” or the official motto of the United States, “In God We Trust,” simply because someone may be offended? There is no constitutional right to protection against being offended. Yet, many Democrats want to ban religion completely from public life because it may be offensive to some sects or political groups.

Religion, Invaluable Support to the Moral Code

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816 was the “Penman of the U.S. Constitution,” and as head of the Committee on Style at the Constitutional Convention, wrote the famous Preamble, “We, the People of the United States,” and authored the final draft of the U.S. Constitution. Since Morris had been “intimately involved in the successful formation of the new government in the United States, he offered suggestions to the French: “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God.”

Without the prop of religion, crime would certainly increase. The state would then cite the usual pretexts to step in, such as the “necessity” to pass draconian laws to reduce crime. However, the lawful citizens who obey the law are disproportionally affected because it is the criminals who disobey laws. Thus, in combating lawlessness and crime, liberty is eroded bit by bit. 

Religious instruction helps maintain lawful behavior with less police force having to be used to preserve the peace. Religious morality is not necessary to prop up the moral code in totalitarian states. Tyranny maintains law and order by brute force and repression — and therefore, the necessity for the monopoly of power wielded by the state. When churches are allowed to exist in police states they are subjugated by the state, which was the case in the former Soviet Union and continues to be the case in communist Cuba. Judeo-Christian precepts are beneficial to the survival of Western Civilization, a just bulwark against anarchy on the one hand and the rise of totalitarianism and tyranny on the other.

The founders were great men who displayed orthodox, Christian thinking, and Judeo-Christian ethics. They rejected theocracy, as most Americans, but that is a far cry from what progressives espouse today — that religion should have no role in public life and that religious people should be silenced from public discourse.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle asserted that the mean between extremes was best. At present, the extreme application of “separation of church and state,” which has really become the abrogation of Christianity has moved America (and the West) inexorably to the secular extreme, so as to exclude Judeo-Christian principles from public life.

To the neutral observer, this must be perplexing and inexplicable for a nation founded largely by patriotic men steeped in Christianity, particularly since various sects are currently in vogue in America, such as Santeria in South Florida with its protected rites of animal sacrifices; Hindu festivals promoted in various communities; and even incredibly Sharia law seriously discussed by some writers as an alternative to common law. Yet, as we have seen, communities have been attacked for displaying Christian symbols during Holy Week and Christmas, and for using such phrases as “In God We Trust.”

Some toleration to the faith upon which America was founded should be extended to the faithful. No straw man fallacy should be feared either. The so-called ”far right” or Christian fundamentalists will not establish some kind of theocracy in the United States. In fact, in time the opposite is much more likely — namely, the establishment of a completely secular, socialist state, where might is right and government power becomes the civic religion of the state as well as the altar where everyone will be forced to worship to the detriment of any remaining liberty.