I wasn’t sure if this belongs here so if you think it should be elsewhere I wouldn’t be surprised, but this subject is of debate nationally so here I will try here. The whole seperation of church and state movement is a joke. The constitution does not even say the phrase(from what I have read). I’m guessing but I bet the founding fathers wanted to avoid the situation in England with having the church run government.
Here is where I looked to read the amendments. Amendment numero uno says
for those who do not want to look it up. It says it will not make a LAW respecting a religious estableshment or prohibit it. That is not enough to cause a movement to make sure no religion is envolved in the government in pretty much all ways. Where did seperation of church and state originate. Well I will end this now because I am rambling. Any debate to my thinking is welcomed.
The Cavalry will be here soon, I hope, but IIRC the phrase “separation of church and state” was used by Thomas Jefferson. It has, of course, become common parlance since the 18th century, and as such has become a bit separated from him (viz. your question about its origin:)).
What the amendment says (as I’m sure you meant, but I am clarifying) is that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof.
I have the feeling that you are slightly misinterpreting the wording… very possible in our day and age. By prohibiting Congress to make a law respecting the establishment of religion, the framers preserved the rights of the Quakers and the Catholics, the Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, etc. to all worship freely in this country, at a time when other nations were still persecuting people of various beliefs. This is essentially the core tenet of a Separation of Church and State which was opposed by the Founders (the Federalists, mostly, I think) who saw the unification of Church and State as detrimental to the ideals of the Revolution. I mean, look at England, France, Spain, or Austria at this time… all very traditionalist monarchies with very heavy ties to religion. On top of that, religion for years was used to drive out people from their homes.
And now that I’ve thoroughly confused MYSELF, I’ll shut up and hope someone can make sense of what I’ve just said.
Establishing a religion is not limited to declaring “Church X is now the official religion over the United States.” Likewise, I think it’s fair to say a law favoring one faith over another limits free exercise of others.
Also, there is such a thing as precedent. The First Amendment says what is mentioned above. However, there is abundant judicial and legal precedent favoring separation of church and state, and that carries equal weight.
Only for those who do not understand its importance.
So, just speaking hypothetically for a moment here … if Congress started each session with a Muslem prayer, and the teachings of Mohammed were posted in every courtroom across the land, and the Pledge of Allegance was altered to read “one nation under Allah,” would you have any problems with that? How about if it was Shinto, Buddhism, or Scientology instead?
From those evil non-Christian Founding Fathers, Jefferson and Washington and Franklin.
I guess I stated things wrong. I am not saying what is in our constitution is wrong, and I am not saying a “reasonable” seperation of church and state is wrong, what I AM saying is that when you have people who take the original purpose and twist it into their own agenda it becomes rediculous. It should be used reasonable, and not trample someones right to wear a cross, or the star of david, or ANY religious symbol. I think the seperation is important in certain cases, but I am back to the responsible thing.
Hopefully this makes more sence and seems less of an attack on the originators and some of the people for it, which I am for certain things and somethings I am not. Sorry for any confusion.
Oh, another thing I wasn’t paying attention to the text of the amendment while phrasing it so again sorry for that, I am not a complete moron(I do of course read the SD)
Show me ANYBODY who’s ever said that people shouldn’t be allowed to wear crosses or religious symbols. I dare you. You sound like you don’t know what the whole idea of separation of church and state is about.
Specifically, it seems you’ve missed the STATE part. I’m an atheist, but I don’t care if someone wears a cross. I strongly support their right to do so. (You know the old Voltaire quote - “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”)
I care if the STATE (or government) uses money that I pay in taxes for religious purposes or ways that endorse religion. For example, I have a problem if religious schools are receiving tax money. I have a problem with my tax money going to religious institutions, or religious institutions that take in enormous amounts of money paying no taxes. I have a problem with public schools endorsing religion through prayers and vows and such, and I have a problem when religious documents are posted on courthouses. The issue is not distaste for religion, but the combination of church and state. Does that illustrate the difference at all?
Good post, Marley. Many Christians and people from other faiths also believe in separation of church and state. The Christians who seem to want religious activities in school generally assume that it will be their own religion which will be the foundation. They don’t realize what a can of worms they are opening. It might hit them about the time the Wiccans arrive.
Well Marley I completely agree with your second paragraph, I believe it also. My point about the cross was refering to the teacher who was fired for wearing one. She won rightfully, and was allowed back in school, but some people still think she is wrong. That is what I think is rediculous. Let me ask you one thing. Was it ok for my grade school to allow a group of students(anyone who wanted to participate) to gather during lunch and talk about religion? Well christianity in general, small school so that was the primary religion. It did not force the religion on anyone, and it did not exclude anyone who wasn’t christian from attending.
I appreciate you taking the time to help me understand and to just debate with me, that is why this place rocks.
Could you give some more information about that case of the teacher fired? I didn’t hear about it.
I don’t know about your elementary school. According to the ACLU, religious student groups are allowed to meet in public schools only if it’s not during school hours, ie, other students are not required to be there. However, I don’t know that a bunch of kids talking during lunch counts as a “student group”.
It’s worth pointing out that at the time of the drafting of the Bill of Rights, a number of states had, or were entertaining proposals for, what were called “plural establishments”. For example, in colonial Virginia the Anglican Church was the established church (and Baptist preachers were sometimes thrown in jail); after the revolution there was introduced “A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion”, which would have provided state support for all Christian denominations, and not just a single state church. James Madison (sometimes known as the “Father of the Constitution” for the role he played in drafting that document) wrote a famous Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments in opposition to the proposal, and in favor of the non-establishment of religion broadly construed–not just, “no single official church”, but “no state support for religion”. The “Memorial and Remonstrance” contains his famous words “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?” In his “Detached Memoranda”, Madison referred to “the separation beween Religion & Govt” as being “strongly guarded” in the U.S. Constitution; in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston Madison wrote “religion & Gov’t. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together”. (In that letter and in the “Detached Memoranda” he also expresses his disapproval of Congressional chaplainships and Presidential proclamations of “days of prayer”.)
As was mentioned above, Thomas Jefferson wrote of “separation of church and state”, in the following terms: “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 & State.” (Letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, January 1, 1802.) (Jefferson didn’t actully invent the phrase “separation of church and state”, which in one form or another goes at least as far back as the 17th Century New England preacher Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, and a pioneer of religious liberty.)
I have seen this argument many times, and I think it is a joke. It’s a meaningless quibble. If the Constitution said “Congress shall make no law violating the separation of church and state…” then people would say “Ah hah! But it doesn’t say anything about an establishment of religion!”
In fact, “establishment of religion” is more clearly a restriction on the government’s power to promote religion than would be “separation of church and state”. In Christian countries the church has always been separate from the state. Even the most ardent Christian theocrats have not proposed that there be a U.S. Department of Religious Affairs, complete with a Bureau of Sacraments whose Christening Division is in charge of providing the appropriate rites and ceremonies for the baptisms of all infants. Rather, before the American Revolution Christian countries had “establishments of religion”, in which the church and state, though separate institutions, mutally supported each other and worked together to promote Christianity and suppress other religions (or “heretical” versions of Christianity itself). (At times such arrangements meant that the church in effect controlled the state; much more often, the state in effect controlled the church.) What our Constitution does is not merely insure that the church doesn’t simply merge with the state, but that the power of the state is not used to promote or retard religion; in the words of the Supreme Court:
Finally, if you don’t want the separation of church and state, may I ask what it is you do want?
Yes if they would also have allowed a group to get together to discuss why there is no god.
BTW, when I was small the teacher led us in saying the Lord’s prayer out loud. Problem was, my home town was primarily Catholic and I was Protestant and the respective versions of the prayer are different. Every daya I had to choose between saying the prayer “wrong” or continuing on and having everyone look at me funny.
I think that people who think it is OK to have prayer in school, the 10 commandments in courtrooms, etc. think that there is only one right religion and it is theirs.
Another thing that anybody who dislikes church/state separation should also realize that it would probably decrease church attendance dramatically. Church-going rates in America far exceed those in Europe, most of which had a long lack of that separation. The only countries where church attendance rates come close to America’s are in Ireland and Italy, where the religion is deeply ingrained in the culture.
(The above comes from a religion and society class I took about a year ago, I’ll see if I can find numbers online.)
Perhaps that’s not as big an issue as the “whose religion?” one, but it’s something to think about.
The teacher’s aid (not teacher) in question was not forbidden to wear a cross, she was asked to tuck it in while she was working. teachers are allowed to wear unobtrusive religious symbols but they are not allowed to display symbols which draw undue attention or which appear to send a proselytizing message. She was suspended for a year (not fired). She was reinstated after the ACLJ (a right wing legal group started by Pat Robertson) successfully argued that, since she wasn’t a teacher, the rule did not apply to her.
It’s a bit of a gray area but the schools have to draw a line between teachers wearing crosses or Stars of David (and how would you feel about a teacher wearing a big-ass pentagram, nodope?) and wearing “Jesus Saves” T-shirts or other more openly proselytizing messages. This school felt that a cross outside the shirt was a bit much for a TA. The courts disagreed but her staus asa TA rather than a teacher played into the decision.
What it comes down to, nodope, is this: The establishment clause forbids the government from ever saying that one religious view is better or more valid than another. The government is also forbidden from using taxpayer money to spread a religious message. This is the separation of church and state. A lot of Christians seem to think proselytizing others is part of their free practice of religion, and it is, but it cannot be done under the imprematur of any state authority. If a teacher in a public school leads her class in prayer or tries to teach creationism she is misusing taxpayer money (her salary) to propogate a specific religious view.
Kids can meet at lunch and talk about Jesus if they want but they can’t use any public money to promote that view and it can’t be led or organized by a teacher. It also cannot be inflicted on a captive audience (prayers over a school PA system, for instance.
We’re the kids in your school monopolizing the lunchroom in such a way that other kids would not be able to eat lunch without being exposed to prayers or religious speech by others?
What First Amendment jurisprudence amounts to, nodope, is these two mutually supportive propositions:
I am free to choose to practice my religious beliefs, or not, in whatsoever ways I choose, subject only to reasonable restrictions that are in no way based on content. (E.g., I could not hook up a loudspeaker and read the 3:00 AM monastic office so the whole neighborhod hears it – but it matters not whether it’s the monastic office, the Druidic celebration of the moon, my opinions for or against George Bush, or how I feel about the Second Amendment – the content is not regulated; the disturbance to the neighbors is.)
The government, in whole or in part, is forbidden to take any act compelling or coercing a particular belief. That includes government employees, schools and their faculties, etc.
Hence your example of kids getting together to talk about religion at lunch is fine; they’re exercising their First Amendment rights. For a teacher to organize such a group would not – because he/she’s a government employee.
(BTW, just to be technical, the First Amendment, as the reference to Congress indicates, guarantees those rights against encroachment by the Federal government. But, because they’re defined by it as our rights as American citizens, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them against the state.
To me, personally, there is a problem with allowing a specific religious group to organize itself in a school, on school-time, because it implictly (if not explicitly) indicates school (and thus government) sponsorship, which I thought we weren’t supposed to have any of. The reading of the first amendment that tells me this is basically “We’re not going to say anything either way about religion. It’s an entity completely apart from us except as any other private entity has to function within our rules.” And even then there are things that private companies must do that non-profits don’t have to do (unless I have that horribly wrong, in which case I await my punishment. Fair warning, though: I like pain:D).
Excellent post- one of the more well thought out and lucid I’ve seen in my time here. However, I do have one minor disagreement with you- “Christian Countries” have not always been separate from the state. Witness the British Parliament, in which the higher ranking bishops of the C of E (still) sit in the House of Lords, and at various times have been Law Lords, or in effect members of the nations’ highest court. Bishops are also appointed by the Prime Minister (sorry, the are recommended for appointment to the Crown); the Church of England is essentially just another Ministry (quite literally ;-)) with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its permanent Minister-in-chief.
Marley I am not quite sure if you meant exactly what you said or were thinking one thing and said something different but you said:
I hate to surprise you but public taxes do find their way to private religious institutions. For example Federal Pell grants, state Pell Grants, state funded scholarships, or other state and federally funded programs that do not require re-payment from time to time fund the education of a student attending seminary school. University of Notre Dame, a Catholic University, no doubt has students attending its campus, enrolled in its classes, using public taxpayers dollars to pay for their education and this is money they do not have to re-pay. Do you have a problem with this happening?
What about the student voucher program in Cleveland, OH? In the voucher program the people of Ohio are taxed and the money then re-directed into a student voucher program. The student vouchers are then mailed to qualifying parents with kids of the age to attend a school of their choice. Some of the parents choose to send their kids to sectarian schools. Do you have a problem with this program?
If your answer is “Yes,” then I direct your attention to the other religious clause of the first Amendment which is the Free Exercise of Religion clause.
If your answer is “Yes,” then the problem with your analysis is you completely miss the Free Exercise of Religion clause of the First Amendment. The state cannot pass any law that burdens the practice of religion or belief in some religious tenet, principle, or idea. Nor can the state single out those of a particular religious belief or denomination for disparate treatment or different treatment. Hence, the state is prohibited from refusing to give loans, scholarships, or grants to those who seek to attend college, even a seminary college, simply because their religious beliefs would have them to attend such institutions or because they want to attend a religious school. When this happens the state is pulling funding for no other reason than a religious one and the state cannot single out those belonging to a religion or possessing a religious belief for differential treatment. This is a violation of the First Amendment.
