EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of commentaries adapted from articles that ran in consecutive issues of Report from the Capital. Yesterday’s installment challenged myths that the separation of church and state is not implied in the Constitution and that America was founded as a Christian nation.
By Brent Walker
Myth #3: We have freedom of religion but not freedom from religion.
No, this is not true. We have freedom of and from religion. If we don’t have both, then we have neither. Forced religion is simply a violation of conscience, not a voluntary response to God.
To be sure, one does not have freedom from religion in the sense of insisting that your neighbor not preach a sermon on the street corner, or that religious programming be banned from television or the radio, or that our culture secularize itself to suit one’s worldview. But one most certainly has the right to insist upon freedom from state-sponsored religion.
That’s what the First Amendment is all about. Freedom from religion and freedom of religion parallel the two religion clauses: no establishment (freedom from religion), and free exercise (freedom of religion). It also parallels the coming together in history of Enlightenment thought and religious piety conspiring in colonial times to ensconce protections for religious liberty in the Constitution.
We must have both, or else we have neither!
Myth #4: Church-state separation only keeps the government from setting up a single national church or showing preference among faith groups, but not from aiding all religions equally.
If all the founders wanted to do was simply ban a single, official national church, they did not do a very good job of saying so in the First Amendment. An early draft of the Amendment read in part: “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established ….” This draft was passed over. And the founders had ample opportunity to state that the government should be allowed to promote all religion on an even-handed, non-preferential basis.
But the Congress repeatedly rejected versions of the First Amendment that would have explicitly permitted such non-preferential aid. For example, the Senate rejected this proposed language: “Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others ….” It rejected two more proposals with provisions embodying similar language.
No, the Founders approved much more expansive language to keep the new federal government from making laws even “respecting an establishment of religion.” Religion generally — not a religion or a national religion, but no religion at all, period. They did not merely want to keep the federal government from setting up an official national church or to ban denominational discrimination.
In addition to constitutional history, there are practical reasons to reject the attempts of government to aid all religion on a non-preferential basis. In our pluralistic country with its amazing diversity, it would be impossible to aid all religions evenhandedly. Inevitably, government will pick and choose a preferred religion, and it almost always will select the majority, politically-powerful religious tradition for preferred treatment.
Myth #5: Our nation’s Founders were born-again, Bible-believing evangelical Christians, or they were Enlightenment rationalists who were dismissive of religion.
Both are wrong as categorical statements. It is dangerous to generalize about our Founders. We cannot speak in monolithic terms. The Founders exhibited many views about religion. Some were orthodox Christians, many were rationalists, others were deists, and maybe an atheist or two thrown in.
What’s more, they were complicated, multi-faceted Renaissance men of the 18th century, making generalizations even more difficult. For example, George Washington is often held up as an orthodox Anglican. But he always spoke in terms of the deistic “Providence” instead of a personal God and never wrote a word about Jesus. Washington rarely, if ever, took communion.
Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, is often seen as a consummate skeptic who took a razor blade to edit the Gospels. But Jefferson could speak warmly of Jesus and admired his ethical teachings.
Although most of our Founders came out of the Christian tradition, they were a mixed lot when it came to their religion. They do not fit neatly into our 21st century post-denominational religious categories. But we can say with confidence that they were more committed to ensuring religious liberty than enshrining their own religion.
