The Imaginary Wall Between the Church and the State

By Bishop Council Nedd II

What motivated our nation’s Founding Fathers to build such a high wall of separation between church and state?

They didn’t. Like giant alligators living in the sewers and Snapple being owned by the KKK, a constitutional declaration of church-state separation is one of the greatest urban legends of all time.

It is said, however, that if a lie is told enough times it will eventually become the truth. That’s been the unfortunate situation in this case, and the charade has gone on to the extent that legal precedent has been created to shore up the misconception.

In truth, our Founding Fathers had a reverence for religion and never intended for the creation of a ban on religion mixing with policymaking like what the atheists and the groups supporting them such as the ACLU now demand.

The argument alleging the Founding Fathers’ support for a wall between faith and government is actually based on a single letter. Not a constitutional amendment. Not a proclamation or an executive order. Not a law passed by the newborn Congress. Not even an official memo.

Just a private letter.

In 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association — a religious minority in the predominantly Congregationalist state of Connecticut — sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson asking for his guidance on the topic of religious freedom.

According to Tara Ross and Joseph C. Smith, Jr. in the book Under God, Jefferson “put thought into his response”:

Jefferson probably saw the letter as presenting him with a two-fold opportunity. First, he could strike back at the Congregationalist ministers who had attacked him so ferociously during the 1800 campaign… Second, Jefferson’s views on religious policies differed from those of his contemporaries…

Thus, Jefferson’s response to the Danbury Baptists was a vehicle to promote his own religious policy views, much as he might have sought to advance his own economic policy or his own foreign policy.

However,

With a few strokes of the pen, Jefferson thus became the first American to authoritatively suggest that the First Amendment to the Constitution requires separation between religious and civil entities.

In his letter, 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 and State.

It was not the sort of response the Danbury Baptists were seeking or expecting. In fact, they were quite unhappy with Jefferson’s reply. As Ross and Smith wrote:

The Danbury Baptists failed to publicize their receipt of the letter, however, suggesting their disapproval of its contents. The objectionable terminology seems to have been Jefferson’s strong language about “separation between Church and State.” As a religious minority, the Danbury Baptists sought a government that respected freedom of conscience, of course, but they did not want a government that was opposed to religion. To the contrary, as devout Baptists, they believed the positive influence of God on the civic aspects of their lives was as important as his influence on their personal concerns.

Then again, this was just a letter stating his personal opinion. At least that’s what he and the Danbury Baptists might have thought at the time.

It took almost 150 years for Jefferson’s letter to find a welcoming audience. In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case of Everson v. Board of Education, in which the Court upheld the ability for a public school district to transport local children to both government-run and parochial schools. While this ruling was a victory for church and state working together for the public good, the opinion of the Court, as written by Justice Hugo Black, stated: “In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State.”

Little “c” on “church.” Big “s” on “State.” And those words are nowhere in the Constitution — only a piece of President Jefferson’s stationery.

Nonetheless, the atheists, agnostics, nontheists and anyone wanting to drive a wedge between America and its Judeo-Christian founding now relies on it as a legal means of justifying their case.

Jefferson was actually raised in the Anglican faith and, according to Rebecca Bowman of the Monticello Research Department, “believed in the existence of a Supreme Being who was the creator and sustainer of the universe and the ultimate ground of being.”

Furthermore, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church senior minister D. James Kennedy wrote on WorldNetDaily in 2002:

Jefferson's presidential acts would, if done today, send the ACLU marching into court. He signed legislation that gave land to Indian missionaries, put chaplains on the government payroll, and provided for the punishment of irreverent soldiers. He also sent Congress an Indian treaty that set aside money for a priest's salary and for the construction of a church.

The real Thomas Jefferson, it turns out, is the ACLU’s worst nightmare.

It’s also important to note that Jefferson wasn’t at the Constitutional Convention. He wasn’t even in the country at the time. From 1785 to 1789, Jefferson was the American representative to France.

Jefferson was also not a member of Congress during the time that the First Amendment was debated and adopted.

George Washington was someone intrinsically involved in both. As pointed out by Washington biographer Joseph Ellis, Washington is a “central feature in every major event of the revolutionary era.”

Washington was also much more tolerant and accepting of religion and government working together for mutual benefit. As Ross and Smith wrote in Under God:

Washington’s approach to church-state relations differs from Jefferson’s “wall of separation” and the line of modern-day legal decisions that it has spawned. Washington’s perspective on the First Amendment and the Constitution would permit a much more religion-friendly government, even as it emphasized the importance of religious freedom. His imprimatur cannot be seriously questioned — unless one believes that the father of the country, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and served as president during the passage of the First Amendment, misunderstood and indeed violated the Constitution.

Washington viewed America as unique. Its citizens may enjoy the benefits of public religion, while individuals are left free to hold their own religious beliefs.

Furthermore,

During his lifetime of public service, Washington developed a perspective that was more accommodating and encouraging toward religion than the “separation between Church & State” advocated by Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists and, more than a century later, adopted by the United States Supreme Court.

Washington noted during his Farewell Address in 1796: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

Additionally, Washington received a letter of his own from another Baptist group and answered in a much less strident tone than Jefferson. It, and another letter to a group of Presbyterians, is not of the sort shared and lauded by proponents of church-state separation.

In May of 1789, the United Baptist Churches of Virginia wrote to Washington with similar concerns as the Danbury Baptists about being a religious minority. They said: “When the constitution [sic] first made its appearance in Virginia, we, as a Society, had unusual strugglings of mind; fearing that the liberty of conscience, dearer to than property or life, was not sufficiently secured.”

Washington replied: “If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.”

While his response in that letter did not directly address the relationship of church and state, his letter to the Presbyterian Ministers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in November of 1789 was more explicit:

[T]he ministers of the gospel [are] to instruct the ignorant, and to reclaim the devious — and, in the progress of morality and science, to which our government will give every furtherance, we may confidently expect the advancement of true religion, and the completion of our happiness.

Washington and Jefferson. Both were integral to our nation’s founding, but their legacies are very divergent when it comes to faith and governing. In reality, however, they are closer than most people are being led to believe.