Preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell should not forget that, in the colony of Virginia, Baptist ministers were beaten and imprisoned and run out
of town for preaching their dissenting faith, while Anglican ministers were paid with tax funds from the state treasury. (John Buchanan, Southern Baptist
minister and former eight-term Republican Congressman from Alabama, who heads People for the American Way, as quoted by Samuel Rabinove,
"Religious Liberty and Church-State Separation: Why Should We Care?," speech on April 10, 1986, Vital Speeches of the Day, June 15, 1986, p. 527.)
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention [in 1787] took ... only two modest steps with respect to religion, both of these being designed to avert
problems, not raise them. First, the delegates agreed that "no religious test" should ever be required of federal officeholders, and, second, that one could
"affirm" rather than "swear" in taking the oath of office--a clear concession to the tender consciences of Quakers. Other than that, however, the
Constitution was totally silent on the subject of religion: no national church, of course, but no national affirmations of faith, either, not even those of the
most generalized sort. (Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 43.)
Those of our "founding fathers" who participated in the drafting of the Constitution never intended their use of religious illustrations in speeches as more
than rhetoric. They knew the dangers of giving constitutional or legal sanction either to civil religion or to Christianity or to any denominational expression.
They knew that religious liberty requires freedom from any identification of religion with state action. They were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of
religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. (John M. Swomley,
Religious Liberty and the Secular State: The Constitutional Context, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, p. 114.)
If we glance back at our early history, the reasons for placing religious freedom in the First Amendment may become clearer. The quest for that freedom
was one of the motives for emigration to America, but not just for those who wanted to be free to practice their own faith. A surprising majority of colonial
Americans were not part of any religious community. Even in New England, research shows, not more than one person in seven was a church member. It
was one in fifteen in the middle colonies and fewer still in the South, according to the historian Richard Hofstadter. (Milton Meltzer, The Bill of Rights:
How We Got It and What It Means, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1990, p. 71.)
Recognizing the evils of man acting like God or of man's using government to help God out in managing the world, the traditional religionists, such as
disciples of Roger Williams, Isaac Backus, and John Leland, joined with the deists in fashioning a system in which neither belief nor disbelief in God was to
be a matter within the jurisdiction of human government. Both groups sought to secure a government that neither aided nor injured religion, and for this
both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment were adopted. (Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending
Conflict," in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 73 [footnote].)
In 1791 there was no establishment of a single church. Four states never had establishment practices: those colonies had ended their establishments during
the Revolution. The remaining six states had "multiple" establishments, aiding all churches in each state on a nonpreferential basis. It was this
nonpreferential aid to religion that the Establishment Clause was intended to prevent. It is a mistake to assume that established churches and religious tests
for public office holders in some of the colonies and early states show approval of state support for religion. In each such state the people, including church
members and the unchurched, were engaged in a revolution against such practices that, without prodding by the federal government, led to the complete
abandonment of established churches and religious tests for holding office. The concept of separation of church and state is generally attributed to
Jefferson and Madison, but it was really a product of popular resistance, in every state, to state support of religion. In a Massachusetts state referendum in
1833, for example, the people voted ten to one to disestablish all of their churches (Jacob C. Meyer, Church and State in Massachusetts from 1740 to
1833). The Free Exercise Clause was not intended as a check on the Establishment Clause. Both clauses arose from the same problem: a union of church
power with state power. They are complementary in that they reinforce and support each other. (John M. Swomley, "Education in Religious Schools: The
Conflict Over Funding" in the "Church and State" issue of National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter, 1988, p. 13.)
III. Presidents (and Other National Political Leaders) Since the Revolutionary Era
All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government, are compatible with liberty. (Henry Clay,
1777-1852, Speech in the House of Representatives, March 24, 1818. From Daniel B. Baker, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.,
1990, p. 190.)
[Though it would be] rash to assert that civil liberty and an established church cannot exist together in the same State, it may be safely affirmed that history
affords no example of their union when the religion of the State has not only been established, but exclusive. (Henry Clay, 1777-1852; in 1826, as
Secretary of State in the administration of John Quincy Adams. From Mary W. M. Hargreaves, The Presidency of John Quincy Adams, Lawrence,
Kansas: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1985, p.157.)
Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right to religious freedom. (John Quincy
Adams, 6th U.S. President [1825-1829], letter to Richard Anderson, May 27, 1823. From Daniel B. Baker, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale
Research, Inc., 1990, p. 190.)
There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the Gospel as it is from the
intrepid assertion and vindication of the truth. (John Quincy Adams, 6th U.S. President [1825-1829], in his diary, May 27, 1838. From Gorton Carruth
and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 485.)
It is not the legitimate province of the legislature to determine what religion is true, or what is false. (Richard M. Johnson, 1780-1850, Vice President of
the U. S. under Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841, in his second Report on the Transportation of the Mail on Sundays, 1830. From Gorton Carruth and
Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492.)
The presidency of Andrew Jackson [7th U. S. President, 1829-1837] had its effect on religious life. An ardent church/state separationist, Jackson
dissociated himself from any religious denomination, though he had been reared a Presbyterian. On numerous occasions he made pronouncements that
fostered religious liberty and toleration in the new country. (Robert L. Maddox, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New
York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, p. 75.)
President Andrew Jackson did refuse to order a national day of prayer during a cholera epidemic (1832). (Charles Rosenberg, The Cholera Years,
Chicago, 1962, as cited by Oscar and Lilian Handlin, Liberty in America, 1600 to the Present; Volume Two: Liberty in Expansion, 1760-1850, New
York: Harper & Row, 1989, p. 341.)
Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [President Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing to
name a fast day, he feared to "disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the
General Government." (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., American historian, The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 354.
Schlesinger won the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Age of Jackson. Jackson's statement is from his letter to the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed
Church, June 12, 1832, according to Schlesinger's footnote.)
Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious
opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God. (John Tyler, 10th U. S. President [1841-1845], as quoted by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger,
Treasury of Presidential Quotations [Follett, 1964], p. 38, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious
Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 94.)
... and the Democrats backed movements to end remuneration to chaplains of the legislature and to exclude clergymen from the public schools. Wherever
religious tests survived, they were under fire from Democrats, while Whigs, in general, sought to sustain the authority of religion. The Democratic theory of
the relations of church and state did not necessarily imply a weaker personal faith. Some who insisted most strongly on separation, like O. B. Brown and
Elder John Leland, were ministers themselves. The evangelical sects in many states were predominantly Democratic, and many of the leading Jacksonians
were deeply religious. Benjamin F. Butler was celebrated for his piety, [President Andrew] Jackson himself was a regular churchgoer though not a
communicant till 1839, and James K. Polk [11th U. S. President, 1845-1849] was faithful in his Sunday observance. But they all firmly opposed the
political aspirations of religion. Polk, infuriated by a Presbyterian minister who came to see him as President, told him, "that, thank God, under our
constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the U.S. I recognized no distinction of creeds in my
appointments to office." He had met no one in these first two years of his administration, Polk later wrote, who so disgusted him. "I have a great veneration
and regard for Religion & sincere piety, but a hypocrite or a bigotted fanatic without reason I cannot bear." (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., American
historian, The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 355. Schlesinger won the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Age of
Jackson.)
Early in July [1849] Taylor [Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the U.S., 1849-1850] proclaimed Friday, August 3, as a day of fasting and prayer over the
cholera victims. It was one of the earliest, if not the first, national days of thanksgiving proclaimed in the country. In Taylor's mind the celebration
undoubtedly held little religious significance. He was not a churchman, either formally or privately, insofar as surviving evidence evidence allows us to
judge. He never formally joined a church and seems not to have attended services with any regularity. Nevertheless, the day of thanksgiving drew attacks
from free thinkers as "political religious canting" not sanctioned by the Constitution or law. Most Americans supported the plan. Throughout the country
businesses closed for the day and churches held prayer sessions. Nonchurchgoers joined in celebration with a day of relaxation and drinking. (K. Jack
Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985, p. 268.)
I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state
should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. (Millard Fillmore, 13th U. S. President [1850-1853], in an
address during the 1856 Presidential election, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long
Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 35.)
Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved
themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others? (Robert E. Lee, 1807-1870, Confederate general, letter to his wife, December 27, 1856. From
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 498.) |
