ABILENE, Texas (ABP) — Americans are besieged by lies about the relationship of church and state, Brent Walker insisted during the Maston Christian Ethics Lectures at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology, April 10-11.
“The lies I want to talk about are particularly insidious, because … most of them have at least a grain of truth in them,” said Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty. “That's what makes them so hard to answer with a sound bite or a clever slogan.”
Two kinds of people perpetuate the lies, he said. “People who should know better” sometimes spread them intentionally, and “well-intentioned souls who simply have been misled” sometimes repeat them “with a pure heart and the best of motives.”
As part of his speech, Walker cited the top 10 lies most Americans hear about church and state. The first one, he said, is that “our nation's founders were born-again, Bible-believing evangelical Christians, or our founders were Enlightenment rationalists, or our founders were Deists.”
Generalizing about any of these philosophies is difficult and dangerous, Walker said.
“Some were orthodox Christians, some were rationalists, yes, some were deists, and even an atheist or two were thrown in,” he said. “We must acknowledge that, although most of them came out of a Christian heritage and tradition, our founders were a mixed lot when it came to their religion. But we can say with confidence that they were committed to ensuring religious liberty rather than enshrining their own particular religious opinions.”
Another lie, Walker said, is that Americans don't have separation of church and state because those words are not in the Constitution.
“True, the words are not there, but the principle surely is,” he said. Similarly, the words “federalism,” “separation of powers” and “right to a fair trial” are not in the Constitution, but those ideas are represented there.
Some critics have played down Thomas Jefferson's use of the phrase “wall of separation” to describe the appropriate relationship of church and state. But Walker pointed out that James Madison wrote, “The number, the industry and the morality of the priesthood and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church and state.”
That morality, however, has not created a “Christian nation,” Walker added.
“This is a whopper!” he contended. “The United States of America is not a Christian nation — in law or in fact.”
Although no one can deny the nature of Americans as a religious people, the constitution is a secular document, he said.
“We do not have a Christian theocracy,” Walker explained. “We have a constitutional democracy in which all religious beliefs are protected. The same constitution that refuses to privilege any religion, including Christianity, protects the rights of Christians to proclaim the gospel to all who will listen. As a result, paradoxically enough, we are a nation of Christians because we are not a Christian nation.”
And although an early draft of the First Amendment singled out the banning of a national religion, Congress repeatedly declined to narrow the scope of the amendment, Walker said. That way, the founders could adopt a “much more expansive amendment to keep the new federal government from making laws respecting an establishment of religion, he said.
Another widely held belief, Walker said, is that The Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system. In fact, three commandments — prohibitions against killing, stealing and bearing false witness — “are the proper subjects of secular law,” he observed, noting the other seven are religious.
“Remember, American law is based on the common law of England,” he added. “But these prohibitions were already a part of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence before England was Christianized.”
Also, numerous documents that influenced the U.S. legal system “say very little about religion and nothing about the Ten Commandments,” he said.
Part of the debate over the Ten Commandments has led some to mistakenly believe that God is no longer present in public schools. Walker disagrees, and he said only state-sponsored religion has been banned.
“What a thing to say — to presume that Almighty God can be kicked out of anywhere,” Walker said. “No, as James Dunn (former executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee) is wont to say, ‘God has a perfect attendance record.'”
Numerous religious activities are permitted in public schools “from voluntary prayer, to teaching about religion, to studying religious holidays, to Bible clubs before and after school, to religious attire,” he reported.
In the same way, God has access to the public square, Walker added.
“Candidates for (political) office can and do talk freely about their religious beliefs and allow them to influence their stance on public policy, as long as the policy outcomes or government regulations have some secular justification,” he said. “No, we do not have a ‘naked public square,' as some have suggested. I'd say it's dressed to the nines.”
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