Thomas Jefferson
and the Separation of Church and State
By Dr. Gary Scott Smith
Grove City College
US
The
current mid-term elections accentuate the massive
confusion that exists in the United States today
about the meaning of the phrase “the separation
of church and state.” Many liberals contend
the concept requires that religion be completely
divorced from government, while countless conservatives
counter that the founders simply wanted to prevent
the establishment of a national church.
Dee Wampler’s The Myth of Separation Between
Church and State, D. James Kennedy’s What
If America Were a Christian Nation Again?, and David
Barton’s The Myth of Separation all argue
that the founders intended almost no separation
between church and state. Florida Senatorial candidate
Katherine Harris calls the separation doctrine “a
lie.”
In a recent study of 14,000 randomly selected college
freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities
across the country conducted by the University of
Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy,
73 percent of respondents could not correctly identify
the source of the expression “a wall of separation”
between church and state. Many Americans undoubtedly
think this phrase is in the Constitution, but it
is not. The First Amendment simply states that “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The phrase comes instead from a letter Thomas Jefferson
wrote in 1802, to the Danbury Baptist Association.
Justice Hugo Black cited Jefferson’s words
in a landmark Supreme Court case in 1947. “In
the words of Jefferson,” wrote Black, the
First Amendment clause prohibiting “the establishment
of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a
wall of separation between church and State.’
. . . That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
This decision, along with a number of subsequent
ones, has helped push religion out of the public
square.
Jefferson should not be considered the final authority
on the relationship between church and state, although
many magically grant him that authority. His views
are very important, however, and those who invoke
Jefferson’s phrase need to take a closer look
at what he meant by his oft-quoted phrase as well
as his actions as president.
In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson
explained why he, unlike the first two presidents
and almost all state governors, did not proclaim
days for public prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving.
Jefferson argued that the First Amendment prohibited
the federal chief magistrate from issuing religious
proclamations of any kind. He later explained that
both the First Amendment and the Tenth Amendment,
which reserved to the states the powers not delegated
to the United States, prevented the federal government
from “intermeddling with” “the
doctrines, discipline, or exercises” of religious
institutions.
Historian James H. Hutson maintains that Jefferson
consistently supported “the principle of government
hospitality to religious activity” as long
as it was voluntary and offered equally to all citizens.
While the government could not legally establish
one church or creed as a national faith and support
it financially, Jefferson believed that the state,
as long as it remained “within its well appointed
limits,” “could provide ‘friendly
aids’” to religious denominations. Moreover,
he used the term “church” rather than
“religion” in restating the First Amendment,
stressing that “the constitutional separation
was between ecclesiastical institutions and the
civil state.”
Throughout his presidency Jefferson attended religious
services held on government property. He aided infant
congregations in the newly created capital by allowing
them to hold services in the Treasury and War Office
buildings, and he signed a federal law that provided
tax exemption for churches in the District of Columbia.
Moreover, in 1779 as governor of Virginia, he appointed
“a day of public and solemn thanksgiving and
prayer to Almighty God.” As president, Jefferson
approved the use of federal funds to support a Catholic
missionary who worked with the Kashaskia Indians
in Illinois. He also extended three times a law
that granted federal land to a United Brethren society
to assist them in evangelizing Indians in the West.
Thus, to use the words, “high” and “impregnable”
to describe Jefferson’s wall is at odds with
what he said and contradicts what he did.
The United States was not founded as a Christian
nation. Judeo-Christian, Enlightenment, and English
Whig principles all provided an ideological foundation
for our new nation. Nevertheless, biblical ideals
and norms have played a pivotal role in shaping
the structure, standards, and practices of our country.
Today, some argue that the separation of church
and state necessitates that we divorce all religious
voices and values from our government. Daniel Dreisbach,
author of Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation
Between Church and State, contends that Jefferson’s
metaphor, as interpreted by the courts, has been
improperly “used to inhibit religion’s
ability to inform the public ethic,” to thwart
citizens from participating in politics guided by
their faith, and to prevent religious communities
and institutions from speaking prophetically in
the public arena. The founding fathers spoke eloquently,
passionately, and often about the importance of
religiously-grounded morality to the success of
their new republic and provided governmental aid
for religion in a variety of ways. The current effort
to exclude religious perspectives and ideals completely
from government and ensure a naked, ideologically
“neutral” public square is at odds with
the views of the founders, the history of our country,
and the well-being of our society.
(Gary Scott Smith chairs the History Department
at Grove City College and is the author of Faith
and the Presidency: From George Washington to George
W. Bush, Oxford University Press, 2006).
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