As you know, the 'separation of church and state" is not in the constitution, and actually was only in an obscure letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist elder and was pulled out of obscurity by Supreme court justice Blackman to support his misguided opinion in a 1946 ruling, and we have been bludgeoned with it ever since. The Founders never intended for God to be removed from public discourse, but just the opposite. God is fundamental to our nation's survival, as our laws are generated from His laws, and His moral code is our moral code, without which we will descend into debauchery, with totalitarianism the necessary consequence. This has happened with all other successful 'empires', and is happening now with us. A people without a God given moral code cannot govern themselves. This is why one of the foundations of the statist ideas is do away with religion, because religion and morality allow a people to behave with civility toward each other and ensures their liberty and ability to self govern. , The Founders meant that the state will not force citizens to follow only one religion, nor will the state pay any church's way. They also stated the government will not be allowed to stand in the way of whatever religious observance the citizens may wish to engage in, weather that observance be on private or public lands. These ideas are all clearly laid out in the Federalist papers, and Judge Blackman's ruling along with the liberals continued attack on our religious foundations are simply a perversion of the truth to advance the statist agenda.
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The phrase “separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the principle reflected by the Constitution (1) establishing a secular government on the power of the people (not a deity), (2) saying nothing to connect that government to god(s) or religion, (3) and, indeed, saying nothing substantive about god(s) or religion at all except in the First Amendment where the point is to confirm that each person enjoys religious liberty and that the government is not to take steps to establish religion and another provision precluding any religious test for public office. That the phrase does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, only to those who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and, upon learning they were mistaken, reckon they've discovered a smoking gun solving a Constitutional mystery. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to describe one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.
ReplyDeleteSome try to pass off the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists–as if that is the only basis of the Court’s decision. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court’s decision. Perhaps even more than Jefferson, James Madison influenced the Court’s view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether these actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”
The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.
Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state–as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx