More Regarding "Separation of Church and State"

I guess I'm not done stirring up controversy. :) Here is some more discussion on the current politics of "separation of church and state," which I also discussed last time. Some of these comments are regarding a video that we recently watched in church, entitled America's Godly Heritage and hosted by David Barton. Although I will go on to criticize this video in some ways, let me say first that Mr. Barton had a number of worthwhile things to say. He pointed out the godly worldview of many of America's early political leaders; the positive correlation between religious values and a responsible, law-abiding citizenry; and the troubling fact that America has become less dependant on those values in recent decades.

Q: Was the First Amendment originally intended to prevent the government from endorsing Christianity?

A: Almost certainly not. Although many of the Founding Fathers were concerned about the government becoming entangled with any particular Christian denomination, their actions clearly demonstrate that they expected a general Christianity to be a common denominator in American discourse. One clue to the original meaning of the First Amendment is that, although the Constitution specifically demands that no religious test may be required for public office, this was clearly not considered an impediment to requiring officeholders to affirm a non-denominational statement of Christian faith (which they routinely were). In other words, "no religious test" meant that you couldn't be required to be Episcopalian or Methodist, but you could be expected to acknowledge Christianity. Also, as the AGH video points out, the public school reading curriculum was largely based on the Bible and other religious texts, and no one said anything in court about it for over 150 years. To claim that the Founding Fathers themselves anticipated anything like current disestablishment policy is certainly anachronistic.

Q: Does this mean that it's wrong to interpret the First Amendment in such a way today?

A: Not necessarily! In 1791, the Founding Fathers were justified in assuming that practically everyone participating in the American system of government was at least nominally a Christian (I don't know if there were Jews in any significant number, but they apparently were not given much thought in any case). For them, differences among Christian denominations were the full extent of religious diversity. This is no longer the case. I think a very strong argument can be made that the principle behind the First Amendment is more important than how it was originally translated into policy. And that original 1791 principle, I believe, is that the government may not take sides in the religious controversies that exist among its citizens. The religious pluralism of today's America is very different from the prevailing Christianity of 1791, and I think it is valid to say that the religious neutrality intended by the First Amendment can and should now be extended to include neutrality between Christianity and non-Christianity.

Q: Did the Supreme Court say that schoolchildren may not bow their heads to pray over their school lunches?

A: Absolutely not! The AGH video makes this allegation, but it is based on a false representation of a particular ruling (here is what Mr. Barton actually said). To find out the truth, I rode my bike over to the U of A Law Library and made a photocopy of the ruling myself (it's Reed v. Van Hoven, and the citation is 237 F.Supp. 48). For one thing, I found that the case was never argued before the Supreme Court at all (though Mr. Barton clearly implies otherwise), rather it was handed down by a single federal judge in Michigan and never applied anywhere in the U.S. other than his own jurisdiction. As for the decision itself, it is entirely concerned with forbidding the state government from directing the religious activities of students, and never says anything about restricting the students' right to Free Exercise of their religion on their own initiative. Although the ruling was flawed in some ways, it hardly set up the kind of anti-religious police state insinuated by Mr. Barton. In fact, the actual outcome of the case was that the judge denied an injunction requested by atheist parents against the school's accomodation of student prayer, but he also issued some guidelines to ensure that the school did not become too entangled in that prayer. It is true that one of these guidelines says that prayer before lunch should be limited to a "silent prayer during [a] moment of silence," but in the context of the ruling this is clearly opposing an organized recitation of a pre-lunch prayer, not students praying individually on their own initiative.

The fact is that U.S. courts have always recognized a very broad right of students to pray at school, and one should not believe scare tactics to the contrary.

Q: Did social indicators from murder to divorce to bad test scores all skyrocket because the courts "took prayer out of schools"?

A: This is another of Mr. Barton's allegations. He spends a good deal of time in the AGH video displaying graphs of various indicators of anti-social behavior, every one of which shows a dramatic turn for the worse at 1962 (the year in which the Supreme Court ruled that public schools may not lead their students in prayer). Even if you grant that he has accurately represented the data (and I have serious doubts about that), there is very little to support his assumption of a causal link between these social trends and the Supreme Court. Quite a number of things changed in this country during the 1950's and 1960's. Many of these changes had detrimental effects on our moral climate (while many others were positive), and very few of them had anything at all to do with the Court. In my opinion, the fundamental problem in this country is no different from that of any other time or place in history: that people refuse to allow the transforming work of God to take place in their lives. And that is something that can neither be done nor undone by laws.

In a similar vien, Mr. Barton displays some statistics showing the superior performance of private Christian schools when compared to public schools. He claims that this is because there is still prayer in the Christian schools, but in truth there are far more significant (and relevant) differences. Students in Christian schools are far more likely to have parents with a stable marriage who are involved in their lives (by far the best indicator of scholastic success), and also to be middle- to upper-class. Parents in these categories are not disproportionately generated by the Christian schools, rather they are disproportionately likely to send their children to Christian schools. Furthermore, private schools have the option of kicking out problem students, which has the unintended consequence of removing their lower test scores. If Mr. Barton really wants to find out the statistical effect of a school's Christian outlook, he should compare Christian schools to a segment of public school students who have a similar demographic makeup. But for whatever reason, he does not do this.

Q: Do people object to the Ten Commandments because they don't like to be told "Don't steal" and "Don't kill"?

A: I lost count of how many times Mr. Barton said this in the AGH video. The Ten Commandments are nothing more than an expression of universal moral law, the argument seems to go, and no one could object to them unless they object to the whole concept of morality. But in fact, there are a number of reasons why people might find the text of the Ten Commandments to be contrary to their beliefs, even if they agree that murder and theft are immoral. The most obvious of these are the first three commandments, which have nothing at all to do with universal moral law, but rather with worshipping the God of the Bible. The Sabbath commandment also speaks undeniably of a religious observance, one which in fact has been the cause for persecution of dissenters at many times in history (in Puritan Massachusetts, for example). I've even heard people say they object to the tenth commandment because it mentions a man's wife in the same context as his cattle, and they feel that this treats women as property. Whatever one thinks about that, I don't think it can be denied that the text of the Ten Commandments has clear religious content, and may be contrary to the beliefs of non-Christian (but nonetheless upstanding) American citizens.

Q: When the courts tell people like Roy Moore to remove religious displays, aren't they trampling on the First Amendment right to Free Exercise of religion?

A: Every American citizen has the right to Free Exercise of his religion. He can pray in public, display any religious text he likes, etc. This is a fundamental meaning of the First Amendment, and every court in the nation recognizes it. Controversy arises only when a person is arguably acting not as an individual but as a representative of the government. It is in these cases that the principle of "benevolent neutrality" becomes operative. This is not to say that you fall under a "gag order" when you get elected to office -- anyone who reads about politics knows that there is broad latitude for a public official to speak openly of religion -- but problems arise when it looks like the government is "endorsing" a particular religious belief.

Oftentimes it is not easy to make this determination. As many legal scholars have lamented, the rules on what is "endorsement" and what is not are rather fuzzy and ill-defined. And to be sure, there have been a number of cases in which I think the courts have gone too far in removing religious displays from public view. On the other hand, when you take a two-ton granite monument, inscribe it with a number of Bible passages, and display it in one of the most prominent locations in the state (the center of the rotunda of the state judicial building), I don't think there is much doubt that you are intending to use the government's stamp of approval to exalt specific religious beliefs. As a matter of fact, Judge Moore freely admits that this is his intention. There is no question of Roy Moore's right to say what he wants as an individual (which is certainly not being threatened), or even of the government's ability to acknowledge the religious values of citizens as long as it doesn't endorse them (for example, the courts have said that Moore's monument may be displayed in the judicial building, as long as it is not in such an exalted location). Rather, it is a question of the government representing all of its citizens, whether they are Christians or not.

Q: The Founding Fathers believed that Christianity was essential to the success of American democracy. Does this mean that the Christian religion ought to be endorsed in the law?

A: As the AGH video rightly points out, George Washington, John Adams, and many others of our founding leaders believed that American democracy would stand or fall with its citizens' attitude towards Christian morality. However, if you pay close attention to their words, they did not necessarily conclude that legal support for Christianity was a remedy for this concern. Adams, as quoted in the AGH video, said that "we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." This is absolutely true, and I certainly agree that the deterioration of religious and moral consensus in this country has contributed to a great deal of trouble (although skeptics may point out instances where religion itself becomes violent, I would argue that this is a separate problem). But is this deterioration actually due to decreased legal support for Christianity? Adams would say no, that the government becomes powerless to enforce morality if the people themselves have abandoned it. And here we have the root of the problem. If there is moral decay in this nation, it is because we, the Church of Christ, have failed to confront the materialism and self-centeredness of our society and to model and proclaim something better. It does no good to blame the problem on politicians, nor is political action alone going to ultimately solve anything. Rather, both the problem and the solution lie within the lives of individuals.

Of course Christians should be involved in politics. Like all American citizens, it is our civic duty to speak out for the causes that are important to us. But for one thing, we must always do it with the gentle and respectful spirit that God calls us to. And for another thing, I see little benefit in spending time advocating that the government pay greater "lip-service" to Christianity. A society may have laws that fulfill every wish of the antidisestablishmentarian, yet have a serious lack of righteousness among the population (many examples from the history of "Christendom" come to mind). On the other hand, a vibrant and transformative Christianity thrives in many parts of the world despite laws that are actually hostile to it (far worse than anything we deal with here). No law, however just, can change people's hearts. Rather, we must seek to change people's hearts so that they will desire more just laws. 

Posted by Matt on 9/08/2003 03:45:00 AM