…New House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to spin this
information in a way that can only be described as dishonest: “Only in
Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,”
he said.
Johnson rejects the separation of church and state in our
government, saying that the framers’ idea “clearly did not mean…to keep
religion from influencing issues of civil government. To the contrary, it was
meant to keep the federal government from impeding the religious practice of
citizens. The Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state,
not the other way around.”
Actually, James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the
Constitution, had quite a lot to say about why the government and religion must
be kept apart.
In 1772, when he was 21, Madison watched as Virginia arrested
itinerant preachers for attacking the established church in the state. He was
no foe of religion, but by the next year, he had begun to question whether
established religion, which was common in the colonies, was good for society.
By 1776, many of his broad-thinking neighbors had come to believe that society
should “tolerate” different religious practices; he had moved past tolerance to
the belief that men had a right of conscience.
In that year, he was instrumental in putting Section 16 into the
Virginia Declaration of Rights, on which our own Bill of Rights—the first ten
amendments to the Constitution—would be based. It reads: “That religion, or the
duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be
directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore
all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the
dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice
Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
In 1785, in a “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious
Assessments,” Madison explained that what was at stake was not just religion,
but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion
over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of
conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they
could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could
throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.
Madison believed that a variety of religious sects would balance
each other out, keeping the new nation free of the religious violence of
Europe. He drew on that vision explicitly when he envisioned a new political
system, expecting that a variety of political expressions would protect the new
government. In Federalist #51, he said: “In a free government the security for
civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the
one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity
of sects.”
In order to make sure men had the right of conscience, the First
Amendment to the Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”
In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson called this amendment “a
wall of separation between Church & State.” In a letter of January 1, 1802, he explained to a group of Baptists from
Danbury, Connecticut, how that principle made him refuse to call for national
religious days of fasting and thanksgiving in
his role as head of the government.
Like Madison, he maintained that “religion is a matter which
lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for
his faith or his worship.” “[T]he legitimate powers of government reach actions
only,” he wrote, “[and] not [religious] opinions.”
“[T]hat act of the whole American people which declared that
their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’” he wrote, built “a wall of
separation between Church & State.” It prevented him even from such
religious practices as declaring a day of fasting in times of trouble, or thanksgiving in times of triumph.
—Heather Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=628702608614710&set=a.426385065513133
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-01-02-0027
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/virginia-declaration-of-rights
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163#JSMN-01-08-02-0163-fn-0014-ptr
https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
Commentary on Christianity: The separation of church and state is the least of our concerns.
“The gospels tell
followers of Jesus to be meek, humble, generous, forgiving, loving, merciful,
nonjudgmental, noncritical, and repentant. Christians must turn the other cheek
when slapped, share their property and give it to those who would take it; always
go the extra mile and accommodate those who would borrow from them. They must
love their enemies and pray for their persecutors (Matthew 5:38-45; Luke
6:27-30; Luke 6;36-38). Jesus also forbids his followers from being angry with
their brethren, on pain of judgment and hellfire, and urges them to reconcile
and come to agreement with their adversaries (Matthew 5:23-25). He admonishes
them to treat others as they would have others treat them (Matthew 7:12; Luke
6:31), and he warns them against ‘taking up the sword’ (Matthew 26:52).
“But how many
self-professed Christians actually behave according to gospel values? Such
believers would never, for example, deny anyone food, shelter, or medical
benefits, regardless of the needy party’s condition of birth, financial
circumstances, race, immigration status, religious beliefs, or sexual
orientation. They would not look down on the poor and consider them
unworthy of help. They would welcome immigrants, especially those seeking
asylum, rather than imprisoning them. If their churches were wealthy, they
would demand the sale of church assets to help fund care for the poor. They
would not hoard weapons of war or attempt to overthrow honest elections. And
they would laugh at the ‘Christian prosperity’ proponents, who according to the
gospels have received their reward and will receive nothing more in Heaven.
“According to Jesus,
people should view life on Earth as a trial venue, an audition for Heaven, in
which their behavior will largely determine where they’ll spend the rest of
eternity once they die. Those who fill his stated criteria (and also happen
to be gifted with God’s ‘grace’) will ascend to Heaven (John 12:25 and 12:28).
Everyone else (i.e. most of humanity) will be tortured forever in Hell. Judging
by widespread Christian behavior, this torture will include enduring the
company of most of the self-professed Christians who ever lived” (Davis).
So, what do we make of the Catholic Church's history of ignoring priestly pedophilia and its cultural genocide and deaths of Indigenous children by Catholic clergy? How can we reconcile with the Catholic Church's flagrant complicity and hypocrisy? How can we forgive Christian ethnic cleansing and the divine Manifest Destiny? And what should we make of today's theocratic fascists, these white Christian Nationalistic misogynists and homophobes who are repressing women's rights and LTGBQ? And what about Christianity's archaic ideologies and indoctrination of a need for salvation perpetuated through irrational fear and guilt?
No doubt, many religious believers reinforce enmity toward those with different convictions, instead of offering good will. These conclusions are empirically substantiated: the cultural genocide of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations; the
genocide of Yazidis and Christians by ISIL; the destruction caused by the
Byzantine-Muslim Wars, the Crusades, the French Religious Wars, the Spanish
Inquisition, the Catholic Church's burnings and executions for
heresy and its history of torture and terrorizing of Jews and Muslims and the
Trail of Tears; the Vatican's illicit financial partnership with Adolf Hitler
and indifference to the Holocaust; the Thirty Year's War; the Lebanese Civil War; the Northern
Ireland conflict; the Sunni and Shia Muslim conflict, to name just a few historical examples. Though religion has also been a positive life force for millions of
people, there are millions of people who believe it is God's will to engage in radical, mass brutality and ruthlessness.
-Glen Brown
Notes:
Davis, Dan. “How to Be a Christian according
to Jesus,” Free Inquiry, August/September 2023, Vol. 43 No. 5.
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