Church and State in “Christian” America

    The United States was founded as a Christian nation, and now we’re going the other way! Christians are being squeezed out of schools and government, turning us into a secular nation.

    No, the Founding Fathers did not want religion to control the government, so the Constitution created a wall of separation between church and state to keep them apart. Religion should play no part in government.

    These are the two opposing sides in the current debate over the proper relationship between church and state in America, says New York University law professor Noah Feldmen in his recent book, Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem – And What We Should Do About It.

    In a remarkably even-handed discussion of the problem, the author finds evidence for both views, but says the most important idea that influenced the First Amendment of the Constitution was from John Locke: liberty of conscience – that the government had no authority to govern the individual’s choice of religion. This was a revolutionary idea, embraced most clearly by Roger Williams in the founding of Rhode Island.

    Feldman traces the history of church-state relations in the United States through five stages:

    ● The early days of so-called “nonsectarianism,” which was actually Protestant Christianity and allowed such government involvement in religion as reading the Bible and teacher-led prayers in public schools.

    ● The rise of “strong secularism,” which developed after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 and had the goal of fully replacing religion by “reason” in all areas, including belief, education, and politics.

    ● The reaction of “Fundamentalism” and the Scopes “monkey trial” over the teaching of evolution in public schools in the early twentieth century.

    ● The judicially-developed doctrine of “legal secularism” in the second half of the twentieth century, which differed from strong secularism in arguing that the government was not opposed to religion but should strive to be neutral in religious matters.

    ● Beginning in the 1970s, the emergence of “values evangelicals,” mostly evangelical Protestant Christians joined by conservative Catholics, who pushed strongly for a government based on commonly-shared religious values.

    At the present time, the author thinks the country is being torn apart by a stalemate between the “values evangelicals” and the “legal secularists.” Victories by legal secularists have largely removed religion from schools and other public spaces, and they appear to be winning on cultural issues such as racial, ethnic and sexual diversity mandates; gay rights, and same-sex marriage.

    On the other hand, values evangelicals have broken down the once-strong barriers between the state and organized religion in several areas, including government funding of some religious activities, such as faith-based social programs, tuition vouchers, and campaigns to promote sexual abstinence among teenagers.

    Feldman thinks both modern secularists and values evangelicals misinterpret the First Amendment. The framers of the Constitution were not concerned with protecting the state against religious influence, he says, nor were they particularly concerned with keeping religious symbolism out of the public sphere. On the other hand, evangelicals are wrong to think that therefore Christian values should infuse all the activities of the state, because the government simply lacks authority in religious matters.

    An illustration in point: Sunday mail delivery. Those who cite the decline of Sunday “blue laws” as evidence that the country is slipping away from its biblical heritage may be surprised to read in Feldman’s book that when Congress created a national postal system in 1810, the mail was delivered seven days a week. In fact, seven-day-a-week delivery continued for over a century, until 1912. In 1828 a proposal to end Sunday delivery failed, at least partly because that would involve the government in taking a stand on which day is the Sabbath!

    How to bridge the gap between these two positions and unify the country? Feldman’s solution is basically to freely allow religious speech and symbols in public life, including schools and city halls, but at the same time to strictly enforce the institutional separation of church and state and not allow any government funding of religious activities.

    That might sound pretty reasonable, but it does ignore one important historical development. Taxes are no longer collected only for the police and fire departments and other institutions of government. Now the government takes in money and redistributes it to achieve social goals; for example, by giving loans and grants to help students get an education. Would a strict ban on government funding of religious activities rule out government scholarships for students who choose to attend a yeshiva or a Christian college rather than a state university?

    Feldman’s solution would also seem to require the reversal of cases like Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, in which the Supreme Court, relying on the “viewpoint discrimination” doctrine of free-speech law, held unconstitutional a university’s policy of distributing its student activities fund, collected from mandatory student contributions, to all student groups on campus except religious organizations.

    On the other hand, a wide-open policy on religious expression in government would go far beyond hoary courthouse monuments displaying the Ten Commandments. Feldman’s solution would apparently allow, for example, an in-your-face plaque on the city hall door quoting John 14:6 from the New Testament, where Jesus says “No one comes to God the Father except through me.”

    Of course, true free speech concerns should not allow discrimination against religious expression -- censoring, for example, the child who writes about the Bible when the teacher says to “write a report on your favorite book,” but accepting book reports from everyone who writes about a secular book. But this is a far cry from religious expression that carries the government’s imprimatur. No doubt the distinction is hard to draw sometimes, but the test is basically simple: Is this just the expression of one or more private individuals, or do the circumstances show that the weight of the government is behind it, promoting or approving the speech?

    So, Professor Feldman proves to better at explaining the history and nature of the deep divide over church and state in America than at prescribing an adequate solution. But perhaps clear illumination of the problem is the first step in solving it. If so, his book should be welcomed by all who seek reconciliation of the opposing sides in today’s “culture wars.”