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Does the Constitution separate Church and State?
Yes,
the First Amendment is based on ideas that allow government
authority and the authority of organized religion to
peacefully coexist.
Where does the idea of separation come from?
From
the trial of Catholic priest Martin Luther in Germany in the
year 1521. Beginning with Pope Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae
in 1075 and until Luther's time, the Pope claimed the power
to raise armies, lay taxes, and depose kings, so the church
was over the state.
After
Henry VIII threw off the Pope's authority and established
the Church of England in 1534, the state was over the church
in England until Luther's ideas led the English to adopt a
separation of church and state through the Act of Toleration
of William and Mary in 1689.
Why is Luther's trial important?
Luther
objected to the Catholic church selling indulgences, which
connected paying money to getting forgiveness of sins. The
Bible does not teach that getting forgiveness is connected
with paying money, so the only authority for selling
indulgences was that the Pope had authorized them.
Because
Luther challenged the Pope's authority, the Pope labeled
Luther a heretic and sought to punish him. The Pope claimed
authority over the Holy Roman Empire, which included
Germany, so Luther was tried before the Imperial Council,
which included officials from both the church and the state.
Luther's defense established boundaries that allowed church
and state authority to peacefully coexist.
How did Martin Luther's defense separate church and
state?
Against
the church, Luther claimed the Pope had no authority to
command beliefs or practices that violated scripture.
Against the state, Luther claimed the "liberty of
conscience," the right to hold whatever religious beliefs he
thought were true, provided he did not invade the lives or
property of others.
Luther
pointed to God's twin roles as both Creator and Redeemer and
said that this distinction divides the Bible's rules into
two parts, the "laws of creation," also called "natural
law," and laws concerned with salvation. Natural law
includes rules like "don't kill" and "don't steal" that
government must enforce if men are to live together in
society. Luther said that government must enforce God's
moral rules, but could not make rules relating to the
redemption of the soul - like punishing Luther for objecting
to indulgences.
Does "liberty of conscience" mean government must
never acknowledge God and remain completely neutral to all
organized religions?
No,
although this is the interpretation of "separation of church
and state" the Supreme Court has adopted since 1947, history
shows there are two problems with this view that make it
impossible for a government that we would call "free" to
achieve, because pursuing this interpretation destroys
individual liberty.
How does remaining neutral to all religions destroy
free government?
Forcing
the state to remain completely neutral to any religious
beliefs destroys free government because the central
principle of free government is that all citizens are equal.
This does not mean that all citizens possess the same
physical or intellectual capabilities but that each citizen
possesses the same rights as his fellows, and these rights
come from the Biblical moral rules that government is
supposed to enforce. For example, because the Bible commands
us not to murder and not to steal, each citizen possesses a
right to life and to property that cannot be taken away
unless he invades the same rights of other citizens. So I
can shoot you in self-defense, or government can put you to
death for murdering me, but I cannot murder you in cold
blood under a free government.
But
the idea that individuals have the same rights is unique to
the moral rules of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The moral
rules of Hinduism, for example, teach that some are
"spiritually unclean" and so have lesser rights than other
citizens. Likewise, a literal interpretation of the whole
Islamic Koran, such as is held by fundamentalist Muslims,
teaches that those who resist Islam have lesser rights to
life and property than Muslims. If government is to remain
neutral to organized religion, then it cannot insist that
everybody has equal rights. The only reason we have equality
in the U.S. is because our Founders based our Constitution
on the same ideas they based our Declaration of Independence
on, the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," an English
term of legal art that means the "eternal immutable rules of
good and evil" to which God Himself conforms "found only in
the holy scriptures."
Thomas
Jefferson considered John Locke's Second Treatise of
Government so important that he made it required reading in
classes on politics at UVA. Locke says:
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Thus
the Law of Nature stands as an Eternal Rule to all
Men, Legislators as well as others. The Rules that
they make for other Mens Actions, must, as well as
their own and other Mens Actions, be conformable to
the Law of Nature, i.e. to the Will of God, of
which that is a Declaration, and the fundamental
Law of Nature being the preservation of Mankind, no
Humane Saction can be good, or valid against
it.
-John
Locke, Second Treatise on Government
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How does barring the state from acknowledging God
destroy individual liberty?
Barring
those who wield the coercive power of the state from
acknowledging God destroys individual liberty because unless
rulers believe they themselves are bound by a law higher
than their arbitrary whim they will claim absolute power.
This lesson was lost twice in British history, and both
times the price of learning it again was paid in
blood.
Early
English Christian kings, like Alfred and Edward the
Confessor, stated in their legal codes that the role of
government was to enforce God's natural law. They based
their codes on the Ten Commandments and believed they, too,
were subject to God's moral law. This lesson was lost with
the Norman Conquest of 1066. To restore it, English nobles
met King John at Runnymede and forced him to sign the Magna
Carta, and it became a fixed principle of English government
when Henry de Bracton compiled the first treatise on English
law during that same century.
But
the lesson that the king must acknowledge God was lost again
when Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534. By placing the
state over the church, Henry made the king's rules superior
to God's rules, so by the early 1600s English monarchs were
violating Magna Carta. This situation caused two civil wars
in England: the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s and the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. It also led John Locke to write
the books and essays that inspired both Thomas Jefferson and
the rest of the Founding Fathers.
In
his Essay on Toleration, Locke discusses what religious
ideas government must be silent on. But Locke expressly
states that government must reinforce citizens' belief in
God:
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[B]elief
of a deity is not to be reckoned amongst purely
speculative opinions [that government should
not enforce], for it being the foundation of
all morality, and that which influences the whole
life and actions of men, without which a man is to
be considered no other than one of the most
dangerous sorts of wild beasts, and so incapable of
all society.
-John
Locke, Essay on Toleration
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Why do Jefferson and Locke say government support for
public prayer is essential to a free society?
Just
as citizens loose liberty when the king decides to kill or
steal, free society falls apart when individual citizens
decide to break God's moral rules. The moral dilemma facing
individuals in deciding whether to obey God's rules is no
different than the moral problem we face in trying to
prevent government from asserting absolute power. And the
answer to the problem is the same, too. Citizens will be
less likely to keep God's rules the less they believe there
is a God, or that God conditions eternal rewards and
punishments, in part, on obedience to His
commandments.
Jefferson
put it this way:
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Reading,
reflection and time have convinced me that the
interests of society require the observation of
those moral precepts...in which all
[Christian] religions agree....a future
state of retribution for the evil as well as the
good done while here [is essential to public
morality]....can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm
basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that
these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they
are not to be violated but with His
wrath?
-quoted
in James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of
the American Republic
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Which
sounds very much like Locke, who said this:
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Be
the cause what it will, our Savior found mankind
under a corruption of manners and principles, which
ages after ages had prevailed, and must be
confessed, was not in a way or tendency to be
mended. The rules of morality were in different
countries and sects different. And natural reason
nowhere had cured, nor was like to cure, the
defects and errors in them. Those just measures of
right and wrong, which necessity had anywhere
introduced, the civil laws prescribed, or
philosophy recommended, stood on their true
foundations. They were looked on as bonds of
society, and conveniences of common life, and
laudable practices. But where was it that their
obligation was thoroughly known and allowed, and
they received as precepts of a law - of the highest
law, the law of nature? That could not be, without
a clear knowledge and acknowledgment of the
lawmaker, and the great rewards and punishments for
those that would or would not obey him.
-John
Locke, The Reasonableness of
Christianity
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But Jefferson said the Constitution erects a "wall of
separation between Church and State." Doesn't this mean
government cannot allow prayer in its facilities?
Jefferson
did say the Constitution erects a wall of separation between
Church and State, and the Supreme Court has taken this
statement out of context to build a new First Amendment
jurisprudence out of thin air. Here's what the Chief of the
Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, James H.
Hutson, reports about Jefferson's actual opinions and
practice:
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The
description of Jefferson's presidency as a rebuke
to Christianity is a caricature that disregards
conflicting evidence that has long been accessible.
It has also been undercut by the conclusions of
recent scholarship that Jefferson's views on
religion underwent change as he grew older, changes
that carried him far from his apparent infatuation
with secular moralism in the 1770s and 1780s.
Scholars believe...Jefferson experienced a
conversion to Unitarian Christianity.
"I
am a Christian" he wrote to Benjamin Rush..."in the
only sense in which he [Jesus] wished
anyone to be."
The
first fruits of Jefferson's efforts to recover the
"pure and primitive Gospel" was a forty-six page
compilation, completed at the White House in
...1804, of what he considered to be Jesus's
authentic sayings.
As
president, Jefferson put his rejuvenated faith into
practice in the most conspicuous form of public
witness possible, regularly attending worship
services where the delegates of the new nation
could see him - in the "hall" of the House of
Representatives.
Services
in the capitol continued...into the 1850s....After
the Civil War, from 1865-1868, the House permitted
the newly organized First Congregational Church of
Washington to use its chambers for church and
Sunday school services, at precisely the time, May
13, 1866, when Congress passed the Fourteenth
Amendment, which, according to some later judicial
theories, forbids religious activities on public
property.
-James
H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the
American Republic
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Where can I learn this
history?
Learn
about the spread of Christianity in Europe
Learn about Luther & the Reformation
Learn more about Luther's trial, and how the spread of the
Bible sparked freedom
Video!
When English kings claimed absolute power, Purtian
Christians led by Oliver Cromwell revolted in the 1640s, to
return English government to the limits set by God's natural
law.
Learn
how Luther's Liberty of Conscience created freedom in
England and America
Read
the excerpt
from Blackstone's
Commentaries
that inspired the Declaration of Independence
Locke's Treatises on Government explain why the Bible is
essential to freedom and limited government
Locke's Essay on Toleration explains the boundaries between
church and state authority
John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity explains why
the Bible is essential to free society
To learn how Jefferson came to understand the importance of
faith in God and Christian morals to a free society read
James H. Hutson's companion book to the Library of Congress'
exhibit "Religion and the Founding of the American
Republic
The most authoritative reference on the true meaning of the
First Amendment is David Barton's "Original
Intent"
Books you might find at
www.bookfinder.com:
Much
of our true history is lost, to find it, you have to look
for out of print books. These books may also be in a large
library.
Puritans and
Liberty
The actual debates of Parliament's Puritan army after the
revolution of the 1640s edited by A.S.P. Woodhouse. A frank
discussion of how Christian principles create
liberty.
The New England Clergy
and the American Revolution
by Alice M. Baldwin, Duke historian and first Dean of Duke
Women's College
Baldwin explains how the philosophy of the Declaration and
Constitution was first articulated in America by the clergy
to solve religious disputes in the early 1700s. Baldwin's
history provides the context to understand the letter in
which Jefferson mentioned "separation of Church and
State."
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