The Overton Salon

by Andrew Dyrli Hermeling

Part II: Church and State

Let us begin with a little compare and contrast, reminiscing on our middle school days [daze] and our teachers’ affinity for Venn diagrams. On the one hand, the European nations of Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Greece (to name but a few) all have official state religions (Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Reformed, and Eastern Orthodoxy respectively).  Yet most would agree that the prevailing cultures of these nations are decidedly secular.  The church has been relegated to the position of glorified census and records bureau and holds very little sway over mores and cultural movements.  On the other hand, the United States was founded upon a firm commitment toward political secularism.  While the New England colonies did indeed adopt a policy of state religion, the concept was abandoned by the time of the Revolution.  However, despite our tradition of political secularism, mores and cultural definitions within the nation are often critiqued and defined using theistic, if not specifically Christian biblical language.

As stated in my previous post, the founders attempted to create a system of governance based upon the principles of reason, a power that many of them perceived as being diametrically opposed toward the failings of human passions.  Thomas Jefferson cites the First Amendment of the Constitution as creating a “wall of separation” between church and state during a letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802.  This view is rooted in the writings of John Locke, who felt that the government had no say in the individual conscience.  Furthermore, in 1797, a treaty signed with Tripoli stated that the government was not founded in anyway in accordance with the Christian religion.  Moreover, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, clearly stated that his intent in the writing of the First Amendment was to secure separation of church and state. “We are teaching the world the great truth that Govts. do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Govt.”

So where does the false memory of a time when God was an official member of political discourse come from?  I believe that two theories hold water (not to suggest that they are the only two), appealing to two very different political movements.  The first was the necessity of moral language and a religious imperative during the struggle for the full citizenship of African-Americans.  The inability of the emotionally disconnected language of politics to fully deal with the issue of slavery forced abolitionists to change their rhetoric and voice their cause by illustrating why slavery was in fact evil in a very spiritual sense.  Abolitionists argued against the practice of slavery in much the same way that conservatives argue against abortion today.  Logic and reason has very little voice in the dialogue, and most people today would agree that it need not in the case of slavery, yet the nation is woefully divided over the appropriateness of such language in the dialogue over abortion rights.  Moreover, it is a rare outlier who is offended by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, despite the fact that it deliberately combined the spheres of religion and politics in order to achieve a purely political goal.

In regards to the second theory, I would argue that the adaptation of “God language” within the political vernacular happened as a direct response to the political language of atheism used by Communism during the middle of the 20th century.  This is most evident in the addition of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance as adopted in 1954.  In the 18th century, the opposition to theistic language in politics was an overt attempt to distance the political system of the United States from those of Europe, where God was used as justification for authority.  The same need for linguistic contrast in the 20th century caused this reversal.  As a nation we insisted that we were diametrically opposed to the godless “Russkies” and began illustrating this polarization by overtly stating that we were “one nation, under God.”

However, despite the adoption of theistic language in political discourse, it is clear once again that this was not the Founders’ intent.  In part III of this critique, we will analyze whether the intent of the Founders is reasonable.