| On the editorial
pages of U.S. newspapers and at sundry Web sites, proponents of
an impregnable wall between church and state intermittently clash
with modern theocrats who would delve beneath the wall and, as Hamlet
might say, "blow it at the moon." Whether the immediate provocation
be placement of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, Bible classes
in public schools, school prayer, school vouchers, public display
of the crèche, tax exemptions for churches, federal funds for faith-based
initiatives, or judicial interdiction against the phrase "under
God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the new theocrats seek to undermine
the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. A favorite ploy
is to attribute pious remarks to the first U.S. presidents. The
remarks, some spurious, are supposed to demonstrate that the most
eminent founders of the nation sanctioned state furtherance of religion.
Hence, in his farewell address to the fledgling
nation, George Washington, the theocrats often point out, warned
that when the body politic is devoid of religious sentiment, the
nation must suffer: "Whatever may be conceded to the influence of
refined education on minds, reason and experience both forbid us
to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle." On a similar score, John Adams is customarily cited:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." A local
guest columnist theocratized Washington in a brazenly evangelical
way. "The mission of America and the church is one and the same:
to further the cause of Christ," the father of our country supposedly
averred.
The early presidents, it seems, were all
devotees of Scripture who deemed the Bible a desideratum for both
governor and governed. Did not Washington postulate that "it is
impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible"? Did not
Adams eulogize the Book: "I have examined all religions, as well
as my narrow sphere, my straitened means, and my busy life, would
allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the
world"? In the theocratic eye view of American history, James Madison,
the father of the Constitution, was an ideological forbear of Judge
Roy Moore. After all, it is (falsely) alleged, Madison remarked,
"We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments
with all our heart."
Do such testimonies, whether authentic or
fabricated, to the worth of religion validate a liaison between
church and state?
Hardly. Even if it could be shown that the
"religious principle" heightens civic morality and nourishes polity,
it doesn't follow that the state should conspire with the church
to inculcate the principle. The state has no expertise in soul making;
that is the bailiwick of the church. If the church falters, it shouldn't
expect the state to bail it out.
Nothwithstanding the above quotations, the first
presidents were scarcely gung ho for institutionalized Christianity,
supported or unsupported by the state. In an 1831 sermon delivered
in Albany, New York, the Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal
minister and historian, advised parishioners that "the founders
of our nation were nearly all Infidels." Certainly, the first five
or six presidents fill the bill.
In their private correspondence, they inveighed
against "superstitious" or "dogmatic" Christianity. In an 1816 letter
to F.A. Van der Kamp, Adams mused: "How has it happened that millions
of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and
Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion
that ever existed?" In a kindred vein, Thomas Jefferson wrote Adams:
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity]
one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded upon fables and
mythologies." Jefferson concocted his own version of the Gospels,
expurgating the miraculous, legendary, and dogmatic elements. Vetoing
a bill granting public lands to a church, Madison observed: "During
almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity
been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places,
pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the
laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." James Monroe
was a loyal friend of Thomas Paine, author of the incendiary Age
of Reason, which skewered the Bible and national religions.
Given their distaste for clericalism, it
isn't surprising that the presidents wanted to quarantine the national
government from sectarian contamination. Washington reminded members
of the New Church in Baltimore that the nation had no religious
bias: "In this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed
over the power of bigotry and superstition. In this enlightened
Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's
religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor
deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices
that are known in the United States." The Treaty of Tripoli, carried
unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams in 1797,
specifically disavowed any proprietary influence of Christianity
on shaping the guiding principles of the new government: "As the
Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded
on the Christian religion, it has in itself no character of enmity
against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen [Muslims]."
The first presidents left ample evidence
that they favored a broad interpretation of the Establishment Clause.
The testimony of James Madison, since he was the prime mover of
both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is especially enlightening.
In an 1803 letter objecting to the use of government land for churches,
Madison wrote: "The bill in reserving a certain parcel of land in
the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a
principle and a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the
United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary
to the article of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress
shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'" As president,
Madison vetoed an 1811 bill giving a charter to an Episcopal church
to dispense charity and education in the District of Columbia. He
said the bill would blur "the essential distinction between civil
and religious functions." In an 1822 letter to Edward Livingston,
Madison noted that strict separation of church and state benefits
both: "Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation
between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And
I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past
one has done, in showing that religion & Government will both exist
in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
Despite the demurrals of wistful theocrats,
separation of church and state is an even better idea today than
it was in 1791, when the First Amendment was duly ratified. The
nation is far more pluralistic now than it was in its formative
years. Once, an intrusion of Christian baggage into the affairs
of state was prejudicial to few since nearly all citizens were at
least nominally Christian. Now that the nation includes twenty to
thirty million (estimates vary) agnostics, atheists, skeptics, freethinkers,
and secular humanists, state aggrandizement of theism, even when
stripped of sectarianism, is inevitably discriminatory.
In his recent State of the Union address,
George W. Bush plumped for legislation allowing religious organizations
to receive federal funds even when they pursue religious agendas
and engage in discriminatory hiring practices. He complained that
"government has often denied social service grants and contracts
to [religious institutions] just because they have a cross or Star
of David or crescent on the wall." He was determined to rectify
the putative injustice: "By Executive Order, I have opened billions
of dollars in grant money to competition that includes faith-based
charities. Tonight I ask you [Congress] to codify this into law,
so people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate
against them again."
In a January speech in New Orleans, Bush
characterized the Bible as the ideal handbook for carrying out child-care
services at a local church. In the same speech, he enunciated the
messianic intent of his administration's faith-based initiatives:
"We want to fund programs that save Americans one soul at a time."
Instead of agitating for an amendment to ban
homosexual marriages, the new theocrats should reexamine an amendment
cherished by old presidents and trampled by the latest avatar to
High Office. |
