STEPHEN VAN ECK
America was founded originally and prominently by Puritans, but when it came to formally founding it, this was achieved by Deists, Unitarians, Freemasons, and liberal Episcopalians—anything but Puritans. There’s been an essential tension ever since between the Enlightenment vision of the founders—who Puritans have been taught to revere while utterly misconstruing—and the Puritan myth of the new Jerusalem, the Shining City on the Hill. The discrepancy between these two images of America is the root of the present-day “Culture War”, declared by modern-day Puritans and waged almost unilaterally, while the rest of us simply live life.
One of the most pitched battles in this Culture War is over secularism. The Right Wing and aggressive Christians are staunchly against it. Their tactic for destroying it consists of the frequent repetition of several false statements that reflect reality as they wish it to be. Some know they’re false, but like Goebbels believe that statements become “true” by repetition.
Here they are, and I’m sure you’ve heard them before:
1) The Founders did not intend to create a secular government.
2) Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution. It’s a “myth” or a “lie”.
3) The First Amendment’s Non-establishment Clause was only intended to prohibit an official denomination.
4) Separation of Church and State is a recent invention of activist Liberal judges. And worst of all (5) America was founded on Christianity.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of hearing these fraudulent statements, concocted to create a false reality. And I never let them pass unchallenged. If you’d like to do the same, below are all the facts you need to enlist in the fight.
First of all, we can easily establish that Separation of Church and State as a concept predates recent suspect Justices. It’s older than the foundation of America itself! Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, and he did so to escape the religious tyranny of the Puritans in Massachusetts. In 1644 he referred to his ideal of “a hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.” In his ideal, everyone could have their own garden, not have one foisted on them.
This concept informed our Founders, especially Madison, as they created the First Amendment. Madison, the Father of the Constitution, used a variation of the disputed phrase in an 1819 letter: “The number, the industry and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State.” So he indisputably believed what revisionists deny.
Furthermore, as President Madison vetoed a bill giving a parcel of land in Mississippi to a Baptist Church, writing “The appropriation of funds … for the use and support of religious societies [is] contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment’.” This proves, using the most relevant person possible, that the Original Intent of the Non-establishment Clause was NOT merely to prohibit an official denomination. Conservatives like to emphasize Original Intent. Let’s hold then to it!
The Danbury Letter by Thomas Jefferson (1802) using the phrase “wall of separation between Church and State” in connection to the First Amendment, is well-known to both sides of the dispute. For their part, the revisionists desperately try to downplay its significance. What they need to know is that, rather than issuing offhand comments, Jefferson consulted his Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, about it, writing that he was “making them [his comments] the occasion … of sowing useful truths and principles among the people. The Baptist address … admits of a condemnation of an alliance between Church and State.
The Supreme Court, in Reynolds v. United States (1879), cited the Danbury Letter as evidence of Original Intent: “Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the Amendment.” These words are from Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, who served long before any recent “Liberal Activists”, so he can’t be so flatly dismissed.
Other Presidents affirmed the Separation of Church and State. Andrew Jackson was asked by a group to declare a Day of Prayer in 1832. He declined, writing “I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution … and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”
Also affirming separation was Millard Fillmore, who wrote, “If any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but in fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”
Then there’s President Grant, who wrote (in 1875), “Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the Church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.”
It’s not only Presidents who understand that church-state separation is legitimate. The same attitude was held by nineteenth-century clergy, as reported by deTocqueville in “Democracy in America” (a book that conservatives flaunting erudition are fond of referring to.) DeTocqueville wanted to understand how America avoided the religious strife he’d known in Europe, and, asking the clergy, “I found that they differed in matters of detail alone, and that they attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state.”
So now we’ve documented that Separation is not a recent imposition. Also that the Non-establishment Clause is more encompassing than the minimalist position advanced by the Religious Right. Should anyone doubt that the Founders intended to create a secular government, they need to see Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797): “The government of the United States is not founded in any sense on the Christian religion.” Those who know about this treaty and who take the revisionist side strive to downplay this, too. But that’s not a tenable position when it’s pointed out that the text was cleared by the attorney General and passed unanimously by the Senate, with no record of any objection to Article 11. There’s your Original Intent. And keep in mind that Article VI of the Constitution says that all treaties when passed become the Law of the Land.
The Constitution is a wholly secular document that doesn’t even mention God at all. So how can it possibly be “based on Christianity” as some claim? The Preamble does not say, “We the People of the United States, in order to advance the Christian Faith …” If the Founders had wanted it so, they would have written it that way.
Yet the Christian Nation proponents do their feeble best to deny reality. “Pat” Robertson goes off the deep end when he often says, “Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution. It’s in the Soviet Constitution” (as if it’s all some sort of commie plot). Sure it’s in the Soviet Constitution—in imitation of ours, which is much older. And like everything else in that defunct document, it was not worth the paper it was printed on. It would seem that there’s some things about our Constitution that “Pat” wishes were likewise defunct.
Instead of bringing up the Soviet Constitution, he might have brought up the Constitution of Japan, which also creates a separation between religion and government. A constitution that was written for them by Douglas MacArthur, based on ours. Would Robertson still accuse him of ripping off the Soviet Constitution?
Most revisionists, including Robertson, are fond of arguing that Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution because those exact words are not there. This is a moronic argument, particularly from a lawyer. Neither are the words “separation of powers”, “checks and balances”, and “right to a fair trial”, and who would argue that these concepts are not part of our system of government? Although they would summarily (and arrogantly) reject any Supreme Court decision of the past 67 years that happens to go against their preferences, the fact remains that these decisions consistently, clearly, and overwhelmingly ratify church-state separation as the meaning of the Non-establishment Clause [Everson, 1947] and reject the minimalist position that the First Amendment only prohibits an official sect [McCollum, 1948]. Like it or not, it’s settled law.
Yet they continue to argue. And like Orwell, they believe that he who controls the past controls the future, so they are attempting to rewrite the past along theocratic lines. Their alliance with (or takeover of) the Republican Party has paid dividends. They’ve managed to stack the Supreme Court with four real ideological activists who dare to reject any and all settled precedents in the area of church-state law, plus a shaky swing vote. We must not let their subversive efforts succeed with the addition of a solid fifth vote. This would mean the death of secularism and the dawn of theocracy ["the worst type of government"—C. S. Lewis] An essential part of preventing that prospect is not allowing the revisionist arguments to succeed. Not when we have all the facts on our side.