SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

THIS POST ROLLED UP

I am glad that my guest contributor Anotmo has made his second contribution to the Heavy-Handed Politics site. His first post was an exceptional piece on environmentalism and can be read here if you missed it.

His second article takes on the issue of the separation of church and state and which appears, at this time, to be a 2 part exposé and perhaps more.

Religion and the Constitution of the United States of America

Part I

The Wall of Separation Between Church and State

This is the first of at least two posts regarding Religion and the U.S. Constitution. My original intention had been to address the entire matter in a single post but it is just too big an issue and the blogosphere too instantaneous a medium for that to be productive. This elephant needs to be eaten one bite at a time.

This first bite addresses the infamous ‘wall of separation between church and state’ which the left uses to support so much of their mischief. Unlike many on the right, I do not object to the phrase just because it does not appear anywhere in our Constitution. Many other phrases such as ‘checks and balances’ and ‘separation of powers’, etc., do not appear in our Constitution either but they are clearly valid constitutional concepts. My objections to the phrase lie elsewhere.

The first problem I have with the phrase is that it is less illuminative than the actual words within the Constitution that it is presumed to clarify. It works better the other way around. What, exactly, does ‘a wall of separation between church and state’ mean? Well, it means that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’. The former is a convenient generalization of the latter but it is the latter which is specific, more definitive and, therefore, most useful. Otherwise, it is as though, having been told by a sales person that the price of a new car is $74,675 and hearing one bystander ask “How much did he say?’‘ and another respond “Mucho dinero, my friend, mucho dinero”, that you then proceed to attempt to obtain financing for the car in the amount of ‘mucho dinero’. Less sarcastically, but more to the point , it is exactly as though new rules regarding the ‘separation of powers’ or ‘checks and balances’ were being invoked to advance current political correctness while the specific relevant words in the Constitution were being ignored.

The second reason I object to the phrase is that the left implements it not so much as a ‘wall of separation’ but as a kind of ‘semi-permeable membrane of separation’. That is, it imposes all kinds of restrictions on religion but apparently none on the state. If the wall were as solid and impermeable as the left supposes when they use it to restrict religious expressions then, it seems to me, it can as well be argued that if and when, say, the Supreme Court is presented with a case involving religion, they would have no alternative but to refuse to hear it on the basis that they are constitutionally forbidden to do so by the principle of ‘A wall of separation between Church and State’. Personally, I would be quite happy with that. In effect it would just mean that in matters regarding religion we the people need to find other ways to deal with it than via the Federal Government.

The third problem I have with that phrase is that it is, itself, as replete with its own ambiguities and contextual controversies as the actual First Amendment words. What can be said about it as factual is that:

1. The phrase was authored by Thomas Jefferson in his response to a letter he received from the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists shortly after Jefferson’s’ election to President of the United States of America in 1800 at which time,

2. the State of Connecticut had, as did most of the original thirteen States, a state supported religion which, in Connecticut’s case, was Congregationalist and,

3. because of which the Danbury Baptists and others in Connecticut who were not Congregationalists were subject to taxation that went to support the Congregational Church unless

4. they and those others followed the ‘degrading’ practice of filing an ‘exemption certificate’ and that

5. the Danbury Baptists were concerned that since their religious freedom was granted within the Constitution it could be understood as granted by government and therefore alienable rather than coming from the Creator and therefore inalienable.

Beyond that comes mostly opinion and interpretation. Without laboring over the details:

1. There is controversy over whether the references to a ‘Constitution’ in the Danbury Baptists letter to Jefferson referred to the Federal Constitution or to that of the State of Connecticut.

2. There is controversy over whether Jefferson understood his response to be a clarification of fundamental Constitutional meaning or whether he understood it to be just a political exercise to placate potential political foes without offending political friends.

3. There is controversy over whether the Danbury Baptists, who were glowingly complimentary of Jefferson in their letter, were so because they genuinely felt an affinity with him or whether it was because they understood that Jefferson was a Deist whereas his predecessor, John Adams, was a Christian, and since they therefore could not predict his opinion and its effect regarding their concern they sought first to butter him up.

4. There is controversy over whether Jefferson was really all that concerned with the Danbury Baptists issue at all, whatever one thinks it was, or whether Jefferson was just using the opportunity to advance an agenda item of his own; that of not favoring national days of fasting and thanksgiving, as his predecessors, Adams and Washington, had done.

5. There is controversy over some of the words that Jefferson deleted from previous drafts of his letter as well as over who and why he sent drafts and solicited feedback before publication.
   

Regardless of where one comes down on these matters, and here again I sometimes disagree with the Right, it simply does not make sense to attempt to clarify controversy over the specific words the Founders included in the Constitution by reference to other less specific but equally
controversial words one Founder included in a subsequent letter. The only reason to do so is if the latter allows a view that the former does not.

The fourth and final reason I object to the phrase is that it contributes to the lefts intellectual vacuousness. ‘A wall of separation between Church and State’ has not just become a major point in the lefts argument regarding religion, it has become the sum total of that argument. I challenge the left to make their point without using that phrase. With notable exceptions, most could not because that phrase is their argument, uttered with an ill disguised intellectual cadence reminiscent of ‘nah, na nah, na nah nah’.

One point the Left ignores regarding Jefferson’s’ letter is that in it he made no objection to the inherent issue of the State of Connecticut, as well as most others, having a state supported religion. This was some twelve years following ratification of the U.S. Constitution and its first ten amendments. Is it, therefore, the Lefts’ view that individual states can have a state supported religion? Try that and listen to them howl. Perhaps, in his otherwise definitive, deeply felt, scholarly and exhaustive pronouncement on the matter Jefferson just overlooked this fundamental point? Or, perhaps, it is just not the definitive, nor even useful, statement on the matter that the Left otherwise supposes.

In the end, we are left with the actual words the Founders included in the Constitution and their subsequent pronouncements and practices regarding the state and religion, of which Jefferson’s letter was only one. These issues will be addressed in a subsequent post regarding this increasingly critical matter. Paraphrasing a point made by Star Parker in a recent column, the problem is not so much that the Ten Commandments have been removed from our courthouse walls; it is that they have been removed from our consciousness.