Government may never dictate one's form of worship or articles

On the Origin of the "Wall of Separation
Between Church and State"

The tragedy of September 11th brought with it a change in the conscience of America, a change that was actually a return to the intentions that of the framers of the Constitution held to. This change, though reappearing as the direct result of a horrific act, is a return to God. In the days and weeks following the attacks people were free, and even encouraged, to engage in public displays of their belief and trust in a Supreme Being. Prayer and faith were the call of the day. Even in our public schools children were once again free to engage in what the First Amendment gives us the right to do - to publicly display our faith in God.

Yet, in the corners of our collective conscience, the murmurs from a certain faction within our society are starting up once again. The call for which they rally is a call that has been misinterpreted countless times over the past fifty years. This being the misinterpreted call for the "separation of church and state." Misinterpreted because it is obvious to anyone studying American history that the founding fathers and the citizens who joined with them, many of them dying to make this country free, did not separate God from the public arena. No, the framers of this great country actively invoked the name of God for wisdom, guidance, and success. They chose the words "endowed by their Creator" with great care and purposeful deliberation, because they desired this country to have a government that was solely responsible to God Himself. To these founding fathers, government needed to be subservient to Divine Providence - not to a monarch, or to an oligarchy, or to a state sponsored religion.

The average American, however, believes that the words "separation of church and state" are contained within the Constitution of the United States, specifically within the First Amendment. When these people are shown that the words "separation of church and state" do not exist in the Constitution, they often insist, some even to the point of arguing, that these words must exist in some founding document of the United States. Somewhere... In some document…

Please realize that the words "separation of church and state" do not exist in any of the founding United States Government Documents. In fact, these words were brought into the public conscience just five decades ago, in a 1947 Supreme Court decision (Everson v. Board of Education), in which the Justices referred to these words, but misinterpreted their meaning. The source of these words originated in an 1802 letter from then President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The Baptists objected to the official Connecticut State church of Congregationalism, and they were seeking President Jefferson's help in the matter. Many of the States had official state churches until 1833, as the Constitution forbade the Federal government from establishing an official church, but it did not forbid the States from having such.

Jefferson said, "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 and state." Although President Jefferson was partial to the Baptists' position, he believed that the Constitution forbade the Federal government to intrude in state matters. In the Journal of Church and State, American University professor Daniel Dreisbach points out that Jefferson's "wall" had "less to do with the separation of church and civil government than with the separation between state and federal governments.(1)" Dreisbach's research is historically relevant, as the Supreme Court's current "separation" interpretation lacks any constitutional foundation.

The First Amendment was originally intended to halt the Federal government from establishing a state religion, but it was never intended to hinder public religious activities, as these two items are not the same thing. Anyone who argues contrary to this must honestly look at the activities, and the documents, of our founding fathers. They most certainly invoked God, publicly, in virtually every founding government document and in virtually every original government activity.

The link between religion and public life runs very deep in the United States. The founding fathers were convinced that it was solely religion that made self-government feasible. John Adams wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." As Chuck Colson stated upon reflection of this quote, "Adams said this because good citizenship is not possible without virtue - and virtue is bred by godliness.(2)"

James Madison, the author of the First Amendment, wrote that our duty to God takes precedence over our duties as citizens. This was reflected in his statement to the Virginia legislature when he concluded, "Before any man can be considered a member of civil society, he must be considered a subject of the Governor of the Universe." As Madison noted in A Memorial and Remonstrance, the reason for the First Amendment was to safeguard "the duty of every man to render to the Creator… homage."(2) Our founding father's intentions were not simply the "believe if you want to believe" ideology that relativists would have us think they intended. Their intentions were made clear in their various writings and in their public statements. These intentions were actually a call to pay homage to God as a civic duty, which would be found in public displays of faith that are deemed "religious activities." The religious activities for which they called upon the citizenship to engage, and in which they also participated, included activities that alone do not constitute a religion. Examples of such include prayer and quoting Biblical Scriptures.

Chuck Colson went further to state, "The framers of this country understood what modern secular elites fail to grasp: Freedom requires that a people rely on inner restraints in order to keep exterior controls to a minimum. That's why they considered religion the first freedom and the first obligation, (2)" and hence the First Amendment.

At a crucial moment during the framing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin - ironically the most secular of the founding fathers - suggested that the delegates pray for illumination. "The longer I live," Franklin added, "the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: That God governs in the affairs of men." Franklin's reminder is credited with turning the tide in the original legislature. Within two weeks of Franklin's comments and his call to prayer, the delegates had reached the various compromises on the points of contention, and the American Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787.(2) (3)

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The Constitution is the framework of our government, while the framework of our established freedoms originally came from the Declaration of Independence. John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States said, "The Declaration of Independence... laid the cornerstone of government... on the precepts of Christianity." He said this, not as a leader intending Christianity to become a "state sponsored religion," but as one recognizing the foundation upon which this government was started.

The true meaning of separation between church and state as Jefferson and the other founding fathers authored the concept is simply this: Government may never dictate one's form of worship or articles of faith. Yet, the founding fathers did not intend that all public worship of God be eradicated; on the contrary, freedom to engage in such worship publicly and privately was the very reason for creating a doctrine of separation between church and state.(4) This ensured that the government could not, and would not, impede an individual's right to worship God as they saw fit, both publicly and privately.

"Religious activities," such as public prayer, are not a "state established religion," and the founding fathers knew this well. This is why at the same time they were creating our government's founding documents in the late 1700's, including the First Amendment, they were also publicly and privately praying to a Sovereign God for guidance. Proof of this is found in their actions: opening legislative sessions with prayer, holding national days of prayer and fasting, and including the words "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" in our Declaration of freedom. The single most important right which they intended to guarantee to the citizens of the newly established republic, was the right to freely exercise their religion - this is what the First Amendment ensured.

The first action of the federal legislature in 1789 was to appoint chaplains in both houses of Congress. Congress still recognizes God by appointing and paying chaplains who open each session with a prayer. Every president of the United States has been administered the oath of office with his hand on the Bible, and ending with the words "so help me God." Witnesses in court cases are also sworn in by placing their right hand on the Bible and taking an oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." The Supreme Court begins every proceeding with the proclamation, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court." United States currency bears our national motto, "In God We Trust." Finally, by law the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag affirms that we are "one nation under God." And Congress would not even allow a comma to be placed after the word "nation" in order to reflect the basic idea that ours is a "nation founded on a belief in God." (4)

This article's intention is to educate and reaffirm the truths that this country was founded upon, that we are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights. The public conscience has been wrongly veered, maybe even commandeered, down the road of "political correctness" or relativism to the extent of "de-God-ifying" our nation. We have left the "one nation under God" and have institutionalized and federally endorsed the religion of secular humanism and relativism. This is not the path that our founding fathers had chosen. This is a path that is being forced upon us under the guise of "separation of church and state." The philosophies of secular humanism and relativism are becoming a state established religion, and this is precisely what our founding fathers had fought against.

Invoking God to "guide and bless" is what this nation had built its foundation upon, and now this very act has become illegal if it is done in the public arena (see some shameful example cases below). What's next? Will we have to do away with the Declaration of Independence, as it invokes an Almighty Creator as the origin of all life and from whom all "rights" flow? Take a stand against the current mis-interpretation of Jefferson's statement, "the separation between church and state." His "thought" did not, and should not, mean to take God and all that is right, holy, and good out of the public arena. By staunchly stating to our children that there are no absolutes of right and wrong, certain factions within our society have assisted in creating a generation of young people whose high schools have become centers of murderous tragedies. When will we learn? The First Amendment was meant to protect us against the very thing that has been happening in this country over the past few decades. We are virtually no longer free to exercise our religion if we choose to do so in public. Nor are schoolteachers permitted to say what is right and what is wrong. Keeping specific organized religion out of our public life does not, and should not, mean keeping religious activities out of public life…

C. G. Chase

October 24, 2001

Just a few recent examples brought to my attention by Judge Moore (there are many more such cases):

In California, nativity scenes and crosses have been removed from downtown Christmas and Easter displays.

In Kansas, city hall monuments featuring religious symbols have been torn down.

In Rhode Island, high school graduation invocations and benedictions have been banned.

In Alabama, students have been prohibited by a federal court order from praying, from distributing religious materials, and from even discussing anything of a devotional or inspirational nature with their classmates or teachers.

In Ohio, an appellate court has overturned the sentence of a man convicted of raping an eight-year-old child ten times. Why? Because the judge who pronounced the sentence quoted from the 18th chapter of Matthew: "But who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

In the courtroom in which Judge Roy S. Moore presides in Alabama, the public display of the Ten Commandments and voluntary clergy-led prayer prior to jury organizational sessions have sparked not only a national controversy but also an epic legal battle. In 1995, the ACLU and the Alabama Freethought Association sued Judge Moore in federal court for retaining the Ten Commandments in his court and for refusing to take them down. (Click Here for Judge Roy S. Moore's Website)

References:

(1) Daniel Dreisbach, "'Sowing Useful Truths and Principles': The Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the 'Wall of Separation,'" Journal of Church and State (Summer 1997).

(2) Chuck Colson, "God Governs the Affairs of Men," BreakPoint.org (February 26, 1998)

(3) The "Bill of Rights" Amendments 1-10 were written by March 4, 1789, passed on September 25, 1789, and ratified December 15, 1791.

(4) Judge Roy S. Moore, "God in the Public Square," Imprimis (Hillsdale College, August, 1999)