SEPARATION
OF THE CHURCH & STATE
C.
E. “Bud” Brann
Few if any issues in America
today arouse more passion than the issue of the separation of church and
state. I attended a meeting today in which someone stated that nothing
in the constitution or any founding documents mentions the separation of
church and state, which is true. The speaker went on to say, also
correctly, the term; “A wall of separation between church and state”
was a phrase first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury,
Connecticut, Baptist church. While both sides sometimes use this
statement to justify their personal belief, seldom do either mention
what led Jefferson to write such a letter.
To understand we need to go all
the way back to the pilgrims and other early colonists. Most people are
aware that these colonists came to the new world to be able to practice
their religions freely. Governments in their former home were church
related and in conjunction with the churches persecuted people who did
not practice the government accepted religion.
It would be nice to say that
their experience with persecution by such government religion led them
to adopt a strong policy of separation between church and state, not
wanting to have happen in the new world what happened to them in the old
world. Alas, such was not the case. Rather they determined to be the
persecutors instead of the persecuted. The original 13 colonies were
organized loosely into three groups by location. The New England
colonists were mostly Puritans, very strict and very willing to
persecute non-believers. The Middle colonists were a mixture of
religions, including Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, and others.
The Southern colonists had a mixture of religions as well, and included
Baptists and Anglicans.
The strictest, as one might
expect, were the Puritans and they set about with fervor to persecute
all those who did not believe as they did.
Examples are found in the web
at: http://www.pathlights.com/theselastdays/tracts/tract_23d.htm
I list a few below:
In November 1637, Anne
Hutchinson held religious meetings in her home in Boston, Massachusetts,
in which she showed by Scripture that Christian experience is based on
faith and not merely mechanical works. As a result of these meetings,
although a mother of fourteen children and expecting another, she was
tried for heresy by the court of Boston in November of that year and
evicted from the colony.
The 1644 act of the General
Court, ordered banishment for those opposed to infant baptism. Because
of this, Baptists, who believe in immersion at the age of
accountability, had to flee. A Mr. Painter was publicly whipped for
refusing to let the authorities sprinkle his child into the established
faith of the majority. Obadiah Holmes, a minister, after baptizing a man
was beaten so unmercifully that many feared for his welfare.
Another individual, found guilty
of having religious views differing from the majority was sentenced to
death. Many of the people had reservations about hanging him as they
heard his final dramatic plea for mercy from the scaffold. But Cotton
Mather, a well-known religious leader, of the day, assured them that
“justice” was being served. The noose took the life of George
Burroughs on August 19, 1692. (Author’s note: Do you see any
difference between that and what has happened in Afghanistan recently?)
Then there was William Penn. He
decided to flee the tyranny of religious laws in England by heading to
the New World with a group of fellow Christians. In 1682 Cotton Mather
learned that his ship was coming. In a letter to John Higginson, Mather
said that this ship carrying “100 or more of the heretics and
malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp at the
head of them” was headed in the direction of the colonies. Mather then
confided in him a cunning plot decided on by the General Court. The brig
Porpoise was to way-lay Penn’s ship, the Welcome, near Cape Cod and
sell the “whole lot to Barbados, where slaves fetch good prices in rum
and sugar, and we shall not only do the Lord great good by punishing the
wicked, but we shall make great good for His minister and people.”
(Shades of Fred Phelps.)
Apparently William Penn managed
to elude the Porpoise, but other Quakers, such as Mary Dyer, met death
in Boston by hanging because their religious beliefs were different.
More than an idle threat, this penalty was codified by a statute which
explained that the “cursed sect of the Quakers” were to be
“sentenced to banishment upon pain of death.”
Clearly the early colonists did
not believe in the separation of church and state. Equally clearly the
return to the very actions the colonists first came to these shores to
avoid became a concern to thinking men and women including our founding
fathers less than a century later.
This matter was such a concern
to them, so important to them, that the very first amendment to the
Constitution prohibited a government establishment of religion and
prevented the government from interfering in a person’s right to the
free exercise of religion. Fundamentalists who deny a wall, either
ignore history or don’t care as they strive to turn America back to 17th
century persecution. Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist church
was in response to a complaint from members of that church about
persecution from the predominant religion.
Fundamentalists are correct
about one thing; there is little written in early law regarding
religions and government. Anyone who has studied history, not distorted
it, knows this is because the founding fathers clearly thought the First
Amendment to the constitution settled the matter. In fact, the only
legal document known to discuss government and religion is the Treaty of
Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey
and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary. Article 11 of that treaty states:
“As the government of the
United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian
Religion,...”.For the complete treaty look up “The Treaty of
Tripoli” in the library or a web site.
Fundamentalists also insist that
our founding fathers showed a great faith in God, and they would have us
believe that this God was the God of the Judeo/Christian belief. The
strange thing here is that the very argument they use to promote their
view in fact works against them. They point to the Declaration of
Independence and its use of words such as “Creator”, “Supreme
Judge” and “Nature’s God”. They don’t seem to notice to what
lengths the founders went to avoid the word “God”. The only use of
the word “God” is in conjunction with “Nature”. In fact,
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, were all deists.
“Natures God” was a Deist phrase. Deist belief, in a nutshell, was
that there must have been a God who created the universe, (this does put
them a bit on the side of today’s creationists), but as they saw no
sign of God’s actions in the world since the creation, they believed
God was no longer involved. In short, they did not believe in the
Judeo/Christian concept of God.
Almost all the best known founding fathers admitted to being
Deists. George Washington never commented on the matter, but the
Minister of the church Washington occasionally attended with his wife,
Dr. Abercrombie, when queried about Washington’s religion some time
after Washington’s death replied, “Sir, Washington was a Deist!”
Now, over two hundred years
later, we are witness to the sad, sordid spectacle of today’s
fundamentalist religionists trying to undo the good works of our
founding fathers and set us back hundreds of years to the days of
religious persecution and force. What’s next, public hanging of
witches, burning at the stake, banishment?
Over two hundred years of
experience and scientific advances, yet these people are far more
ignorant than our founding fathers. I’ll stick with Washington,
Jefferson, and Franklin, not Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Fred
Phelps. Worship as you want and allow others to do the same.
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