The separation of church and state

Abstract

The topic of the Roundtable Discussion ”The Separation of Church and State: Decline and Fall?” carries with it an implied assumption: that there has always been a separation between church and state in America and that it is threatened today. Previous scholarship, cultural debates, political harangues, and religious sentimentalism have explored the legal and historical sides of the debate yet the same answers are always reached: there either has or has not been a separation of church and state in America‟s history. Indeed, often scholars have seen a definite connection between both church and state that evolved into a strict secular separation between church and state. This study examines the issue from the mythical side as opposed to the political, historical, or legal aspects of the issue. The mythos surrounding the phrase “Separation of Church and State” reveals a nationalistic religion struggling to emerge in America. As this nationalistic religion evolves, religious mantras and legal mandates backed with religious fervor resound throughout American history. This paper argues that, when these phrased are studied collectively, there has never been any real separation of church and state in America. Instead, there has always been a close connection between church and state, as revealed by the religious use of myths, mantras, and mandates that reveal a nationalistic religion that has wavered between the secular and the sacred. Introduction The phrase “the separation of Church and State” has become a statement of religious importance in American democracy, culture, and politics. A whole mythos has emerged around the phrase as used in the public debate of today. Politicians, preachers, and pundits from both the left and right invoke the phrase as if it were a mantra, thus indicating a sacred meaning. Separationists—those who insist that the state should have absolutely no involvement in religion—and accomodationists—those who argue that the state should not sponsor a particular religion or sect but can foster religion generally—have emerged as liberal and conservative camps, respectively. Each side fights to install its mythical definition as a mandate for public policy, religious purpose, and judicial law. As the battle wages on today, a question arises: Is this an indication of the decline and fall of the separation of church and state or is this simply another episode in the history of the debate? 1 A different perspective may shed new light on an already shadowy topic. Both the idea of and the phrase “separation of Church and State” have a religious and judicial history stemming from the founding of America all the way to the present. John F. Wilson separates this history into six eras in which the phrase takes on different meanings: 1) the seventeenth century colonial period when establishment was the mandate; 2) 1700-1760s, where the emerging pluralistic religious culture challenged this establishment; 3) 1760-1820, where the first “consistent political 1 Derek H. Davis, Religion and The Continental Congress, 1774-1789: Contributions to Original Intent (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 10-14. Forum on Public Policy 2 argument toward the „independence‟ of church and state emerges with Jeffersonian passion for religious freedom” which James Madison finalized in the First Amendment; 4) 1820-Civil War, when immigrant Catholics and Jews threatened the Christian evangelical hegemony of the early republic: 5) post-Civil War, where the disestablishment of Protestant religious consensus left a void for an emerging state religion; and 6) post World War I where church-state issues became a theological-religious issue, evidenced in a political struggle within an ever more pluralistic society, and thus became a constitutional issue as well. To these six eras should be added a seventh, where the new 1980s political surge of the Christian Right has brought the matter of Church and State to the forefront of political and religious debate. 2 Interestingly, each of these periods roughly coincides with the times of religious awakenings that occurred in American history. William G. Loughlin separates the revivals into the following periods. The Puritans brought with them their notion of Church and State and defined the idea from 1610-1640. The First Great Awakening occurred from 1730-1760 and the Second Great Awakening took place from 1800-1830. A brief “business man‟s” revival took place from 1857-58. Another revival movement hit America from roughly 1890-1920, and a final wave of revivalism began in the 1960s. To these may be added the emergence of the current religious and conservative Right beginning in the 1980s. Loughlin argues that these revivals were “periods of fundamental ideological transformation” that were the byproducts of “an outmoded, dysfunctional world” that led to changes in the social, ecological, psychological, and economic dynamics of American culture. In other words, as the times changed and the previous cultural mythos as set forth by the dominant religious view of the period could not sustain the culture, a new religious mythos developed. Robert Bellah, in his seminal 1967 article “Civil Religion in America,” stated that “the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension.” This paper demonstrates the veracity of Bella‟s assertion by describing the connection of the religious mythos with the issue of church and state within the two coinciding templates outlined above. Myth, mantra, mandate—these terms imply a religious 2 John F. Wilson, ed., Church and State in American History, Studies in History and Politics (Boston, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1965), “Introduction,” quote from xvii. Forum on Public Policy 3 dimension to the cultural and political war surrounding this phrase “the separation of Church and State.” 3 Some definitions are in order. Technically, myth is an expression of a sacred phenomenon from the origins of time in words that validate all there is and “functions as a model for human activity, society, wisdom, and knowledge.” Myths have “an extraordinary authority” that takes one back to the primal beginnings and are manifest in sacred speech, acts, symbols, and places, thus their religious significance. Important for this discussion, however, is that myth can be used for political control over others. In the past as well as the present, politics and religion are both associated with justice. As will be noted below, when Americans of both stripes cite Jefferson‟s “wall of separation between Church and State” (which misstates what the Constitution actually says about the separation of these powers) as if the phrase was set in stone tablets of old, then they use the term as a myth because it says what they believe rather than what the “sacred text” of the Constitution actually means. In essence, myth is what a society chooses to believe despite the facts in order to give stability to their lives. 4 Mantra, according to Frederick M. Smith, is “a sacred utterance, incantation, or invocation” used to bring about a “prescribed effect.” One example of mantra comes from Hindu theology where the words of the Vedas are, because of their divine origin, “elevated to the status of mantra.” Jaraslov Pelikan argues that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are American Scriptures thus, for example, when the Trinitarian phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is cited, either in America‟s past history or in the present political debates, it is used