The following article authored by Matthew Spalding is reprinted in its entirety by permission from THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW, a publication of the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute.
While it is often thought that religion and politics must be
discussed as if they are radically different spheres, the Founders’ conception
of religious liberty was almost exactly the opposite. The separation of church
and state authority actually allowed—even required—the continual
influence of religion upon public life. In a nation of limited government,
religion is the greatest source of the virtue and moral character required for
self-rule.
The
health and strength of liberty depend on the principles, standards, and morals
shared by nearly all religions. In his First Inaugural, Thomas Jefferson
praised America’s “benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various
forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and
the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by
all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here
and his greater happiness hereafter.”
In recognizing the need for public morality and the prominent role that religion plays in nurturing morality, the Founders invited the various religious communities to cooperate at the political level in sustaining the moral consensus they share despite their theological differences. While this does not exclude any religious denomination that agreed with this consensus, in America as a practical matter it overwhelmingly meant the Protestant denominations of the Christian faith and a religious tradition formed by Christian theology.
In recognizing the need for public morality and the prominent role that religion plays in nurturing morality, the Founders invited the various religious communities to cooperate at the political level in sustaining the moral consensus they share despite their theological differences. While this does not exclude any religious denomination that agreed with this consensus, in America as a practical matter it overwhelmingly meant the Protestant denominations of the Christian faith and a religious tradition formed by Christian theology.
What the
“separation of church and state” does, then, is liberate America’s religions—in
respect to their moral forms and teachings—to exercise unprecedented influence
over private and public opinion by shaping citizens’ mores, cultivating their
virtues, and in general, providing a pure and independent source of moral
reasoning and authority. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville meant when he
observed that even though religion “never mixes directly in the government of
society,” it nevertheless determines the “habits of the heart” and is “the
first of their political institutions.”
This
sense of religious liberty—by which faith is accorded maximum freedom while
government gives no preference to any one particular religion— is clearly reflected
in the United States Constitution. Usually taken for granted, the simplest
articulation of the principle, and the starkest difference with earlier failed
attempts to combine church and state, is found in Article VI: “ . . . [N]o
religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or
public Trust under the United States.”
The full
dynamic of religious liberty in America is expressed in the first words of the
First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The constitutional language here
reflects two interconnected ideas, distinguished as the Establishment Clause
and the Free Exercise Clause. Often thought to be in tension, these clauses are
actually two sides of the same coin of religious liberty.
The
Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from passing a law to establish a
national church or to disestablish a state religion. Six of the thirteen
original colonies had established churches, and the First Amendment was
designed not to disallow those churches, or displace them with a national
church. Many opposed an established church because it was seen as a threat to
free exercise of religion, which the Constitution’s framers were most concerned
to protect. The Free Exercise Clause safeguards one’s freedom to believe and to
practice one’s religious faith as a matter of right, without coercion or
obstruction, regardless of whether one’s religion is traditional or at odds
with tradition. Of course, this does not provide a free pass to violate the law
in the name of religion. While the clause prohibits laws that restrict or
discriminate against religion, persons of religious faith—like anyone else—are
still obligated to abide by general laws. Human sacrifice, for instance, is not
excused as an aspect of the free exercise of religion. This arrangement
prevents the federal government from taking sides between religions even as it
makes as much room as possible for a diversity of religions to flourish within
reasonable and general parameters of civil society.
Religious
liberty is sometimes thought to mean not only the prohibition of a religious
establishment, but the prevention of any “intrusion” of religion in political
life—national, state, or local. At the center of this assumption is a letter
Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in
1802. Jefferson wrote: “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 &
State.” The letter, written after the First Congress, which Jefferson did not
attend, has caused much confusion. Jefferson’s purpose was to explain why he
was opposed as president to proclaiming national days of public fasts and
thanksgiving—a practice that Congress during the revolution, and then
presidents Washington and Adams, had followed, as had Jefferson himself as
governor of Virginia. Scholars have generally argued that the letter should be
read from the perspective of federalism, illuminating the meaning of the First
Amendment, which Jefferson understood to apply only to—and thus limit—the
national government and not the state governments.
The
Supreme Court nearly a century and a half later seized upon the “wall of
separation” phrase, arguing that Jefferson’s letter is an authoritative
statement of the meaning of the First Amendment, and creating a new theory of
religious-liberty jurisprudence around it. This new wall of separation “must be
high and impregnable,” the Supreme Court decided in 1947. “We could not approve
the slightest breach.” Thomas Jefferson did not intend such a radical
separation, and neither did the other Founders.
While
the Constitution officially “separates” church and state at the level of
doctrine and lawmaking, it also allows the general (nonsectarian) encouragement
and support of religion in public laws, in official speeches and ceremonies, on
public property and in public buildings, and even in public schools. Such
activities were understood to be part of the free exercise of religion. On the
day after Congress approved the Bill of Rights (including the First Amendment’s
religious-liberty language), it called upon the president to “recommend to the
people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be
observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of
Almighty God.” Washington’s proclamation declared that it was “the duty of all
Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be
grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.”
Two days
after he wrote the “wall of separation” letter, President Jefferson attended a
religious service in the U.S. House of Representatives. Indeed, as president,
Jefferson regularly attended official church services held in the congressional
chambers and allowed executive branch buildings to be used for the same
purpose. In general, the Founders saw nothing wrong with the federal government
indirectly supporting religion in a nondiscriminatory and noncoercive way.
Churches in America, for instance, are tax-exempt, and religious chaplains are
paid by Congress to open legislative sessions and minister in the armed
services.
Indeed,
official recognition of religious faith has always been a central aspect of how
we define ourselves as a political community. The Declaration of Independence
speaks of men being “created equal” and having been “endowed by their Creator”
with certain rights, and the Constitution dates itself “in the Year of our
Lord” 1787. The official national motto is “In God We Trust,” and the Pledge of
Allegiance speaks of “one nation, under God.”
Every
president has made official but nonsectarian religious statements, especially
in major speeches and statements. Washington began the practice in his First
Inaugural, when he spoke of “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe”
and is the “Great Author of every public and private good.” In taking the
Constitution’s oath of office, placing his hand on a Bible, Washington added in
closing “ . . . so help me God.”
This excerpt is taken
from Matthew Spalding’s book, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering
Our Principles and Reclaiming Our Future. Matthew Spalding is
Associate Vice President and Dean of Educational Programs for Hillsdale College
in Washington, D.C. As such he oversees the operations of the Kirby Center and
the various academic and educational programs of
Hillsdale in the nation’s capital.
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