Separation of church and state in the United States
Encyclopedia
The phrase "separation of church and state" (sometimes "wall of separation between church and state"), attributed to Thomas Jefferson
and others, and since quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States
, expresses an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The First Amendment
reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ....", while Article VI
specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." The modern concept of a wholly secular government is sometimes credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke
, but the phrase "separation of church and state" in this context is generally traced to an 1 January 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson
, addressed to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Echoing the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams
—who had written in 1644 of "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world"— Jefferson wrote, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that 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,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State".
Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1879 Reynolds v. United States
decision, the court allowed that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education
decision, Justice Hugo Black
wrote, "In the words of Thomas Jefferson
, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state." However, the Court has not always interpreted the constitutional principle as meaning absolute separation of government from all things religious.
Public debates about the proper extent of church/state separation in the U.S. remain vigorous and impassioned. Politically active evangelical Christians such as David Barton, a former co-chair of the Texas Republican party, emphasize the religiosity of the nation's founders and assert that "separation of church and state," as widely understood by modern historians and jurists, is a "myth" and that the U.S. was founded as a religious, Christian nation.
groups traveled to America to worship
freely, particularly after the English Civil War
and religious conflict in France
and Germany
. They included nonconformist
s like the Puritan
s, as well as Catholic
s. Despite a common background, the groups' views on religious toleration
were mixed. While some such as Roger Williams
of Rhode Island
and William Penn
ensured the protection of religious minorities within their colonies, others like the Plymouth Colony
and Massachusetts Bay Colony
had established churches. The Dutch colony of New Netherland
established the Dutch Reformed Church
and outlawed all other worship, though enforcement was sparse. Religious conformity was desired partly for financial reasons: the established Church was responsible for poverty relief
, putting dissenting churches at a significant disadvantage.
In several colonies, the establishment ceased to exist in practice at the Revolution
, about 1776; this is the date of permanent legal abolition.
in 1789 the Georgia Constitution was amended as follows:
"Article IV. Section 10. No person within this state shall, upon any pretense, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in any manner agreeable to his own conscience, nor be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall he ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rate, for the building or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or hath voluntarily engaged to do. No one religious society shall ever be established in this state, in preference to another; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles."
From 1780 Massachusetts had a system which required every man to belong to a church, and permitted each church to tax its members, but forbade any law requiring that it be of any particular denomination. This was objected to, as in practice establishing the Congregational Church, the majority denomination, and was abolished in 1833.
Until 1877 the New Hampshire Constitution required members of the State legislature to be of the Protestant religion.
The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 disestablished the Anglican church, but until 1835 the NC Constitution allowed only Protestants to hold public office. From 1835-1876 it allowed only Christians (including Catholics) to hold public office. Article VI, Section 8 of the current NC Constitution forbids only atheists from holding public office. Such clauses were held by the United States Supreme Court
to be unenforceable in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins
, when the court ruled unanimously that such clauses constituted a religious test incompatible with First
and Fourteenth
Amendment protections.
Religious Tolerance for Catholics with an Established Church of England was policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule.
Religious tolerance for Catholics with an established Church of England was policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule.
In Treaty of Paris (1783)
, which ended the American Revolutionary War
, the British ceded both East and West Florida back to Spain (see Spanish Florida
).
Tithes for the support of the Anglican Church in Virginia were suspended in 1776, and never restored. 1786 is the date of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which prohibited any coercion to support any religious body.
shows support for separation of church and state as early as the mid-17th century. The document was signed December 27, 1657 by a group of English citizens in America who were affronted by persecution of Quakers and the religious policies of the Governor of New Netherland
, Peter Stuyvesant
. Stuyvesant had formally banned all religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church
from being practiced in the colony, in accordance with the laws of the Dutch Republic
. The signers indicated their "desire therefore in this case not to judge lest we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master." Stuyvesant fined the petitioners and threw them in prison until they recanted. However, John Bowne
allowed the Quakers to meet in his home. Bowne was arrested, jailed, and sent to the Netherlands
for trial; the Dutch court exonerated Bowne.
New York Historical Society President and Columbia University Professor of History Kenneth T. Jackson
describes the Flushing Remonstrance as "the first thing that we have in writing in the United States where a group of citizens attests on paper and over their signature the right of the people to follow their own conscience with regard to God - and the inability of government, or the illegality of government, to interfere with that."
Given the wide diversity of opinion on Christian theological matters in the newly independent American States, the Constitutional Convention
believed a government sanctioned (established) religion would disrupt rather than bind the newly formed union together. George Washington
wrote a letter in 1790 to the country's first Jewish congregation, the Touro Synagogue
in Newport, Rhode Island
to state:
There were also opponents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773, Isaac Backus
, a prominent Baptist minister in New England
, observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." Thomas Jefferson
's influential Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
was enacted in 1786, five years before the Bill of Rights
.
Most Anglican ministers, and many Anglicans, were Loyalists
. The Anglican establishment, where it had existed, largely ceased to function during the American Revolution
, though the new States did not formally abolish and replace it until some years after the Revolution.
, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island
, in his 1644 book The Bloody Tenent of Persecution. The phrase was later used by Thomas Jefferson
as a description of the First Amendment
and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists
(a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the Congregationalist church
in Connecticut
):
Jefferson's letter was in reply to a letter that he had received from the Danbury Baptist Association dated October 7, 1801. In an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists, Jefferson would use the same theme:
Jefferson and James Madison
's conceptions of separation have long been debated. Jefferson refused to issue Proclamations of Thanksgiving sent to him by Congress during his presidency, though he did issue a Thanksgiving and Prayer proclamation as Governor of Virginia. Madison issued four religious proclamations while President, but vetoed two bills on the grounds they violated the first amendment. On the other hand, both Jefferson and Madison attended religious services at the Capitol. Years before the ratification of the Constitution, Madison contended "Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body." After retiring from the presidency, Madison wrote of "total separation of the church from the state." "Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States," Madison wrote, and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States." In a letter to Edward Livingston
Madison further expanded, "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." Madison's original draft of the Bill of Rights
had included provisions binding the States, as well as the Federal Government, from an establishment of religion, but the House did not pass them.
Jefferson's opponents said his position was the destruction and the governmental rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature. In setting up the University of Virginia
, Jefferson encouraged all the separate sects to have preachers of their own, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
. Some have argued that this arrangement was "fully compatible with Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state;" however,
others point to Jefferson’s support for a scheme in which students at the University would attend religious worship each morning as evidence that his views were not consistent with strict separation. Still other scholars, such as Mark David Hall
, attempt to sidestep the whole issue by arguing that American jurisprudence focuses too narrowly on this one Jeffersonian letter while failing to account for other relevant history
Jefferson's letter entered American jurisprudence in the 1878 Mormon polygamy case Reynolds v. U.S., in which the court cited Jefferson and Madison, seeking a legal definition for the word religion. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Johnson Field
cited Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists to state that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order."
Considering this, the court ruled that outlawing polygamy was constitutional.
, which would permit any Virginian to belong to any denomination, but which would require him to belong to some denomination and pay taxes to support it. Similarly, the Constitution of Massachusetts originally provided that "no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience... provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship," (Article II) but also that:
Since, in practice, this meant that the decision of who was taxable for a particular religion rested in the hands of the selectmen, usually Congregationalists, this system was open to abuse. It was abolished in 1833. The intervening period is sometimes referred to as an "establishment of religion" in Massachusetts.
The Duke of York
had required that every community in his new lands of New York and New Jersey support some church, but this was more often Dutch Reformed, Quaker or Presbyterian, than Anglican. Some chose to support more than one church. He also ordained that the tax-payers were free, having paid his local tax, to choose their own church. The terms for the surrender of New Amsterdam
had provided that the Dutch would have liberty of conscience, and the Duke, as an openly divine-right Catholic, was no friend of Anglicanism. The first Anglican minister in New Jersey arrived in 1698, though Anglicanism was more popular in New York.
Connecticut
had a real establishment of religion. Its citizens
did not adopt a constitution at the Revolution, but rather amended their Charter to remove all references to the British Government. As a result, the Congregational Church continued to be established, and Yale College
, at that time a Congregational institution, received grants from the State until Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 partly because of this issue.
, and several states retained them for a short time. This stood in contrast to the Federal Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the employment of any religious test for Federal office, and which through the Fourteenth Amendment later extended this prohibition to the States.
For example, the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 provides liberty of conscience in much the same language as Massachusetts (similarly forbidding payment of "taxes, tithes or other payments" contrary to conscience). It then provides:
This would permit a Test Act
, but did not require one.
The original charter of the Province of East Jersey had restricted membership in the Assembly to Christians; the Duke of York was fervently Catholic, and the proprietors of Perth Amboy, New Jersey
were Scottish Catholic peers. The Province of West Jersey had declared, in 1681, that there should be no religious test for office. An oath had also been imposed on the militia during the French and Indian War
requiring them to abjure the pretensions of the Pope, which may or may not have been applied during the Revolution. That law was replaced by 1799.
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776
provided:
Again, it provided in general that all tax-paying freemen and their sons shall be able to vote, and that no
"man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship."
provides that "no religious Test
shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". Prior to the adoption of the Bill of Rights
, this was the only mention of religion in the Constitution.
The First Congress' deliberations show that its understanding of the separation of church and state differed sharply from that of their contemporaries in Europe. As 19th century Union Theological Seminary historian Philip Schaff observed:
An August 15, 1789 entry in Madison’s papers indicates he intended for the establishment clause to prevent the government imposition of religious beliefs on individuals. The entry says: “Mr. Madison said he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience....”
Some legal scholars, such as John Baker of LSU
, theorize that Madison’s initial proposed language—that Congress should make no law regarding the establishment of a “national religion”—was rejected by the House, in favor of the more general “religion” in an effort to appease the Anti-Federalists. To both the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists, the very word "national" was a cause for alarm because of the experience under the British crown. During the debate over the establishment clause, Rep. Elbridge Gerry
of Massachusetts took issue with Madison’s language regarding whether the government was a national
or federal government
(in which the states retained their individual sovereignty), which Baker suggests compelled Madison to withdraw his language from the debate.
Following the argument between Madison and Gerry, Rep. Samuel Livermore
of New Hampshire proposed language stating that, “Congress shall make no laws touching religion or the rights of conscience.” This raised an uproar from members, such as Rep. Benjamin Huntingdon of Connecticut and Rep. Peter Sylvester of New York, who worried the language could be used to harm religious practice.
Others, such as Rep. Roger Sherman
of Connecticut, believed the clause was unnecessary because the original Constitution only gave Congress stated powers
, which did not include establishing a national religion.
Anti-Federalists such as Rep. Thomas Tucker
of South Carolina moved to strike the establishment clause completely because it could preempt the religious clauses in the state constitutions. However, the Anti-Federalists were unsuccessful in persuading the House of Representatives to drop the clause from the first amendment.
The Senate went through several more narrowly targeted versions before reaching the contemporary language. One version read, “Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others, nor shall freedom of conscience be infringed,” while another read, “Congress shall make no law establishing one particular religious denomination in preference to others.” Ultimately, the Senate rejected the more narrowly targeted language.
At the time of the passage of the Bill of Rights
, many states acted in ways that would now be held unconstitutional. All of the early official state churches were disestablished by 1833 (Massachusetts), including the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut
. It is commonly accepted that, under the doctrine of Incorporation
- which uses the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
to hold the Bill of Rights applicable to the states - these state churches could not be reestablished today.
(Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. It includes the due process and equal protection
clauses among others. The amendment introduces the concept of incorporation
of all relevant federal rights against the states. While it has not been fully implemented, the doctrine of incorporation has been used to ensure, through the Due Process Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause
, the application of most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to the states.
The incorporation of the First Amendment establishment clause in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education
has impacted the subsequent interpretation of the separation of church and state in regard to the state governments. Although upholding the state law in that case, which provided for public busing to private religious schools, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment establishment clause was fully applicable to the state governments. A more recent case involving the application of this principle against the states was Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994).
in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, "The word 'religion' is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted." The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the "separation" paragraph from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."
The centrality of the "separation" concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education
, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
as applying the Bill of Rights
to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black
) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge
and Justice Robert H. Jackson
) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a "wall between church and state" or a "separation of Church from State": their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: "Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth." Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that "[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters."
In 1962, the Supreme Court
addressed the issue of officially-sponsored prayer
or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale
, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents
prior to the Court's decision consisted of: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.") As the Court stated:
The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America." The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart
, objected to the court's embrace of the "wall of separation" metaphor: "I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the "wall of separation," a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."
In Epperson v. Arkansas
, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court considered an Arkansas law that made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory in any school or university that received public funds. The court's opinion, written by Justice Abe Fortas
, ruled that the Arkansas law violated "the constitutional prohibition of state laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." The court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and that "[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them."
In Lemon v. Kurtzman
, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court determined that a Pennsylvania state policy of reimbursing the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in religious schools or the costs of secular instructional materials in religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. The court's decision argued that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable," the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."
Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion. (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause.
In 2002, a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
held that classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in a California public school was unconstitutional, even when students were not compelled to recite it, due to the inclusion of the phrase "under God." In reaction to the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow
, both houses of Congress passed measures reaffirming their support for the pledge, and condemning the panel's ruling. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was ultimately overturned in June 2004, solely on procedural grounds not related to the substantive constitutional issue. Rather, a five-justice majority held that Newdow, a non-custodial parent suing on behalf of his daughter, lacked standing
to sue.
When the Louisiana
state legislature passed a law requiring public school biology teachers to give Creationism
and Evolution
equal time in the classroom, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was intended to advance a particular religion, and did not serve the secular purpose of improved scientific education.
(See also: Creation and evolution in public education
)
The display of the Ten Commandments as part of courthouse displays was considered in a group of cases decided in summer of 2005, including McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky
and Van Orden v. Perry
. While parties on both sides hoped for a reformulation or clarification of the Lemon test, the two rulings ended with narrow 5-4 and opposing decisions, with Justice Stephen Breyer
the swing vote.
On December 20, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
ruled in the case of ACLU v. Mercer County that the continued display of the Ten Commandments
as part of a larger display on American legal traditions in a Kentucky
courthouse was allowed, because the purpose of the display (educating the public on American legal traditions) was secular in nature. In ruling on the Mount Soledad cross controversy
on May 3, 2006, however, a federal judge ruled that the cross on public property on Mount Soledad
must be removed.
ratified a treaty with Tripoli
that stated in Article 11:
Because Article VI, clause 2 of the United States Constitution
renders ratified treaties "the supreme Law of the Land", supporters of the separation of church and state believe the Treaty of Tripoli confirms that the government of the United States was specifically intended to be religiously neutral.
, which references the idea of a "Creator" and "Nature's God", though these references did not ultimately appear in the Constitution nor do they mention any particular religious view of a "Creator" or "Nature's God."
These critics of the modern separation of church and state also note the official establishment of religion in several of the states at the time of ratification, to suggest that the modern incorporation of the Establishment Clause as to state governments goes against the original constitutional intent. The issue is complex, however, as the incorporation ultimately bases on the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, at which point the first amendment's application to the state government was recognized. Many of these constitutional debates relate to the competing interpretive theories of originalism
versus modern, progressivist
theories such as the doctrine of the Living Constitution
.
The "religious test" clause has been interpreted to cover both elected officials and appointed ones, career civil servants as well as political
appointees. Religious beliefs or the lack of them have therefore not been permissible tests or qualifications with regard to federal employees since the ratification of the Constitution. Seven states, however, have language included in their Bill of Rights, Declaration of Rights, or in the body of their constitutions that require state office-holders to have particular religious beliefs. These states are Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
The required beliefs of these clauses include belief in a Supreme Being and belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. (Tennessee Constitution Article IX, Section 2 is one such example.) Some of these same states specify that the oath of office include the words "so help me God." In some cases these beliefs (or oaths) were historically required of jurors and witnesses in court. At one time, such restrictions were allowed under the doctrine of states' rights
; today they are deemed to be in violation of the federal First Amendment, as applied to the states via the 14th amendment, and hence unconstitutional and unenforceable.
While sometimes questioned as possible violations of separation, the appointment of official chaplain
s for government functions, voluntary prayer meetings at the Department of Justice outside of duty hours, voluntary prayer at meals in U.S. armed forces
, inclusion of the (optional) phrase "so help me God" in the oaths for many elected offices, FBI agents, etc., have been held not to violate the First Amendment, since they fall within the realm of free exercise of religion.
Relaxed zoning rules and special parking privileges for churches, the tax-free status of church property, the fact that Christmas
is a federal holiday, etc., have also been questioned, but have been considered examples of the governmental prerogative in deciding practical and beneficial arrangements for the society. The national motto "In God We Trust
" has been challenged as a violation, but the Supreme Court has ruled that ceremonial deism
is not religious in nature.
Jeffries and Ryan (2001) argue that the modern concept of separation of church and state dates from the mid-twentieth century rulings of the Supreme Court. The central point, they argue, was a constitutional ban against aid to religious schools, followed by a later ban on religious observance in public education. Jeffries and Ryan argue that these two propositions - that public aid should not go to religious schools and that public schools should not be religious - make up the separationist position of the modern Establishment Clause.
Jeffries and Ryan argue that no-aid position drew support from a coalition of separationist opinion. Most important was "the pervasive secularism that came to dominate American public life," which sought to confine religion to a private sphere. Further, the ban against government aid to religious schools was supported before 1970 by most Protestants, who opposed aid to religious schools, which were mostly Catholic at the time. After 1980, however, anti-Catholic
sentiment has diminished among mainline Protestants, and the crucial coalition of public secularists and Protestant churches has collapsed. While mainline Protestant denominations are more inclined towards strict separation of church and state, much evangelical opinion has now largely deserted that position. As a consequence, strict separationism is opposed today by members of many Protestant faiths, even perhaps eclipsing the opposition of Roman Catholics.
Critics of the modern concept of the "separation of church and state" argue that it is untethered to anything in the text of the constitution and is contrary to the conception of the phrase as the Founding Fathers understood it. Philip Hamburger
, Columbia Law school professor and prominent critic of the modern understanding of the concept, maintains that the modern concept, which deviates from the constitutional establishment clause jurisprudence, is rooted in American anti-Catholicism and Nativism
. Briefs before the Supreme Court, including by the U.S. government, have argued that some state constitutional amendments relating to the modern conception of separation of church and state (Blaine Amendments) were motivated by and intended to enact anti-Catholicism.
J. Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee, responded to Hamburger's claims noting; "The fact that the separation of church and state has been supported by some who exhibited an anti-Catholic animus or a secularist bent does not impugn the validity of the principle. Champions of religious liberty have argued for the separation of church and state for reasons having nothing to do with anti-Catholicism or desire for a secular culture. Of course, separationists have opposed the Catholic Church when it has sought to tap into the public till to support its parochial schools or to argue for on-campus released time in the public schools. But that principled debate on the issues does not support a charge of religious bigotry"
Steven Waldman notes that; "The evangelicals provided the political muscle for the efforts of Madison and Jefferson, not merely because they wanted to block official churches but because they wanted to keep the spiritual and secular worlds apart." “Religious freedom resulted from an alliance of unlikely partners,” writes the historian Frank Lambert in his book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. “New Light evangelicals such as Isaac Bachus and John Leland
joined forces with Deists and skeptics such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to fight for a complete separation of church and state.”
has argued in his writings that although the separation of church and state is grounded firmly in the constitution of the United States, this does not mean that there is no religious dimension in the political society of the United States. He used the term "Civil Religion
" to describe the specific relation between politics and religion in the United States. His 1967 article analyzes the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy
: "Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in using the word 'God' at all? The answer is that the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension."
Robert S. Wood
has argued that the United States is a model for the world in terms of how a separation of church and state—no state-run or state-established church—is good for both the church and the state, allowing a variety of religions to flourish. Speaking at the Toronto-based Center for New Religions, Wood said that the freedom of conscience and assembly allowed under such a system has led to a "remarkable religiosity" in the United States that isn't present in other industrialized nations. Wood believes that the U.S. operates on "a sort of civic religion," which includes a generally-shared belief in a creator who "expects better of us." Beyond that, individuals are free to decide how they want to believe and fill in their own creeds and express their conscience. He calls this approach the "genius of religious sentiment in the United States."
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and others, and since quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
, expresses an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ....", while Article VI
Article Six of the United States Constitution
Article Six of the United States Constitution establishes the Constitution and the laws and treaties of the United States made in accordance with it as the supreme law of the land, forbids a religious test as a requirement for holding a governmental position and holds the United States under the...
specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." The modern concept of a wholly secular government is sometimes credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, but the phrase "separation of church and state" in this context is generally traced to an 1 January 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, addressed to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Echoing the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams
Roger Williams (theologian)
Roger Williams was an English Protestant theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America,...
—who had written in 1644 of "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world"— Jefferson wrote, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that 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,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State".
Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1879 Reynolds v. United States
Reynolds v. United States
Reynolds v. United States, , was a Supreme Court of the United States case that held that religious duty was not a suitable defense to a criminal indictment...
decision, the court allowed that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which applied the religion clauses in the country's Bill of Rights to state as well as federal law...
decision, Justice Hugo Black
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
wrote, "In the words of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state." However, the Court has not always interpreted the constitutional principle as meaning absolute separation of government from all things religious.
Public debates about the proper extent of church/state separation in the U.S. remain vigorous and impassioned. Politically active evangelical Christians such as David Barton, a former co-chair of the Texas Republican party, emphasize the religiosity of the nation's founders and assert that "separation of church and state," as widely understood by modern historians and jurists, is a "myth" and that the U.S. was founded as a religious, Christian nation.
Early history
Many early immigrantImmigration to the United States
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants,...
groups traveled to America to worship
Worship
Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning worthiness or worth-ship — to give, at its simplest, worth to something, for example, Christian worship.Evelyn Underhill defines worship thus: "The absolute...
freely, particularly after the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
and religious conflict in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. They included nonconformist
Nonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
s like the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s, as well as Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
s. Despite a common background, the groups' views on religious toleration
Religious toleration
Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...
were mixed. While some such as Roger Williams
Roger Williams (theologian)
Roger Williams was an English Protestant theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America,...
of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
and William Penn
William Penn
William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful...
ensured the protection of religious minorities within their colonies, others like the Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
and Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
had established churches. The Dutch colony of New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
established the Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...
and outlawed all other worship, though enforcement was sparse. Religious conformity was desired partly for financial reasons: the established Church was responsible for poverty relief
Poor relief
Poor Relief refers to any actions taken by either governmental or ecclesiastical bodies to relieve poverty experienced by a population. More specifically, the term poor relief is often used to discuss how European countries dealt with poverty from the time just around the end of the medieval era to...
, putting dissenting churches at a significant disadvantage.
Protestant colonies
- The colony of PlymouthPlymouth ColonyPlymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
was founded by Pilgrims, English DissentersEnglish DissentersEnglish Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
or Separatists, Calvinists. - The colonies of Massachusetts BayMassachusetts Bay ColonyThe Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
, New HavenNew Haven ColonyThe New Haven Colony was an English colonial venture in present-day Connecticut in North America from 1637 to 1662.- Quinnipiac Colony :A Puritan minister named John Davenport led his flock from exile in the Netherlands back to England and finally to America in the spring of 1637...
, and New HampshireProvince of New HampshireThe Province of New Hampshire is a name first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization...
were founded by Puritan, Calvinist, Protestants. - New NetherlandNew NetherlandNew Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
was founded by Dutch Reformed Calvinists. - The colonies of New YorkProvince of New YorkThe Province of New York was an English and later British crown territory that originally included all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania...
, Virginia, North CarolinaProvince of North CarolinaThe Province of North Carolina was originally part of the Province of Carolina in British America, which was chartered by eight Lords Proprietor. The province later became the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee....
, South CarolinaProvince of South CarolinaThe South Carolina Colony, or Province of South Carolina, was originally part of the Province of Carolina, which was chartered in 1663. The colony later became the U.S. state of South Carolina....
, and GeorgiaProvince of GeorgiaThe Province of Georgia was one of the Southern colonies in British America. It was the last of the thirteen original colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States...
were officially Church of EnglandChurch of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
.
Catholic colonies
- When New FranceNew FranceNew France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...
was transferred to Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
in 1763, the Roman Catholic ChurchRoman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
remained under toleration, but HuguenotHuguenotThe Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s were allowed entrance where they had formerly been banned from settlement by Parisian authorities. - The Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Roman Catholicism. Under their leadership many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. However, the colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions which antagonized the others. On several occasions low-church dissenters led insurrections which temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to demands to revoke the original royal charter. In 1701 the Church of England was proclaimed, and in the course of the eighteenth century Maryland Catholics were first barred from public office, then disenfranchised, although not all of the laws passed against them (notably laws restricting property rights and imposing penalties for sending children to be educated in foreign Catholic institutions) were enforced, and some Catholics even continued to hold public office.
- Spanish FloridaSpanish FloridaSpanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
was ceded to Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
in 1763, the British divided Florida into two colonies. Both East and West Florida continued a policy of toleration for the Catholic Residents.
Colonies with no established church
- The Province of PennsylvaniaProvince of PennsylvaniaThe Province of Pennsylvania, also known as Pennsylvania Colony, was founded in British America by William Penn on March 4, 1681 as dictated in a royal charter granted by King Charles II...
was founded by QuakersReligious Society of FriendsThe Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
, but the colony never had an established church. - West JerseyWest JerseyWest Jersey and East Jersey were two distinct parts of the Province of New Jersey. The political division existed for 28 years, between 1674 and 1702...
, also founded by Quakers, prohibited any establishment. - Delaware ColonyDelaware ColonyDelaware Colony in the North American Middle Colonies was a region of the Province of Pennsylvania although never legally a separate colony. From 1682 until 1776 it was part of the Penn proprietorship and was known as the lower counties...
had no established church. - The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence PlantationsColony of Rhode Island and Providence PlantationsThe Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was one of the original English Thirteen Colonies established on the east coast of North America that, after the American Revolution, became the modern U.S...
, founded by religious dissenters forced to flee the Massachusetts Bay colony, is widely regarded as the first polity to grant religious freedom to all its citizens.
Tabular Summary
| Colony | Denomination | Disestablished |
|---|---|---|
| Connecticut Connecticut Colony The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut was an English colony located in British America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English... |
Congregational Congregational church Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.... |
1818 |
| Georgia Province of Georgia The Province of Georgia was one of the Southern colonies in British America. It was the last of the thirteen original colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1789 |
| Maryland Province of Maryland The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S... |
Catholic Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity... /Church of England |
1701/1776 |
| Massachusetts Province of Massachusetts Bay The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony in North America. It was chartered on October 7, 1691 by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England and Scotland... |
Congregational Congregational church Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.... |
1780 (in 1833 state funding suspended) |
| New Brunswick New Brunswick New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
|
| Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1776 | |
| Nova Scotia Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1850 |
| Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
|
| South Carolina Province of South Carolina The South Carolina Colony, or Province of South Carolina, was originally part of the Province of Carolina, which was chartered in 1663. The colony later became the U.S. state of South Carolina.... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1790 |
| Canada West | Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1854 |
| West Florida West Florida West Florida was a region on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico, which underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history. West Florida was first established in 1763 by the British government; as its name suggests it largely consisted of the western portion of the region... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
N/A, |
| East Florida East Florida East Florida was a colony of Great Britain from 1763–1783 and of Spain from 1783–1822. East Florida was established by the British colonial government in 1763; as its name implies it consisted of the eastern part of the region of Florida, with West Florida comprising the western parts. Its capital... |
Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
N/A, |
| Virginia | Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1786 |
| West Indies | Church of England Church of England The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St... |
1868 |
In several colonies, the establishment ceased to exist in practice at the Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, about 1776; this is the date of permanent legal abolition.
in 1789 the Georgia Constitution was amended as follows:
"Article IV. Section 10. No person within this state shall, upon any pretense, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in any manner agreeable to his own conscience, nor be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall he ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rate, for the building or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or hath voluntarily engaged to do. No one religious society shall ever be established in this state, in preference to another; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles."
From 1780 Massachusetts had a system which required every man to belong to a church, and permitted each church to tax its members, but forbade any law requiring that it be of any particular denomination. This was objected to, as in practice establishing the Congregational Church, the majority denomination, and was abolished in 1833.
Until 1877 the New Hampshire Constitution required members of the State legislature to be of the Protestant religion.
The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 disestablished the Anglican church, but until 1835 the NC Constitution allowed only Protestants to hold public office. From 1835-1876 it allowed only Christians (including Catholics) to hold public office. Article VI, Section 8 of the current NC Constitution forbids only atheists from holding public office. Such clauses were held by the United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
to be unenforceable in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins
Torcaso v. Watkins
Torcaso v. Watkins, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court reaffirmed that the United States Constitution prohibits States and the Federal Government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office, in the specific case, as a notary public.-Background:In the early...
, when the court ruled unanimously that such clauses constituted a religious test incompatible with First
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
and Fourteenth
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
Amendment protections.
Religious Tolerance for Catholics with an Established Church of England was policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule.
Religious tolerance for Catholics with an established Church of England was policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule.
In Treaty of Paris (1783)
Treaty of Paris (1783)
The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain on the one hand and the United States of America and its allies on the other. The other combatant nations, France, Spain and the Dutch Republic had separate agreements; for details of...
, which ended the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, the British ceded both East and West Florida back to Spain (see Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
).
Tithes for the support of the Anglican Church in Virginia were suspended in 1776, and never restored. 1786 is the date of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which prohibited any coercion to support any religious body.
Colonial support for separation
The Flushing RemonstranceFlushing Remonstrance
The Flushing Remonstrance was a 1657 petition to Director-General of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesant, in which several citizens requested an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship. It is considered a precursor to the United States Constitution's provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of...
shows support for separation of church and state as early as the mid-17th century. The document was signed December 27, 1657 by a group of English citizens in America who were affronted by persecution of Quakers and the religious policies of the Governor of New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...
, Peter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...
. Stuyvesant had formally banned all religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...
from being practiced in the colony, in accordance with the laws of the Dutch Republic
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
. The signers indicated their "desire therefore in this case not to judge lest we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master." Stuyvesant fined the petitioners and threw them in prison until they recanted. However, John Bowne
John Bowne
John Bowne was an English immigrant residing in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, who is honored today as a pioneer in the American struggle for religious liberty....
allowed the Quakers to meet in his home. Bowne was arrested, jailed, and sent to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
for trial; the Dutch court exonerated Bowne.
New York Historical Society President and Columbia University Professor of History Kenneth T. Jackson
Kenneth T. Jackson
Kenneth Terry Jackson is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side....
describes the Flushing Remonstrance as "the first thing that we have in writing in the United States where a group of citizens attests on paper and over their signature the right of the people to follow their own conscience with regard to God - and the inability of government, or the illegality of government, to interfere with that."
Given the wide diversity of opinion on Christian theological matters in the newly independent American States, the Constitutional Convention
Philadelphia Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from...
believed a government sanctioned (established) religion would disrupt rather than bind the newly formed union together. George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
wrote a letter in 1790 to the country's first Jewish congregation, the Touro Synagogue
Touro Synagogue
The Touro Synagogue is a 1763 synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, that is the oldest synagogue building still standing in the United States,the oldest surviving Jewish synagogue building in North America, and the only surviving synagogue building in the U.S...
in Newport, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
to state:
"Allowing rights and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
There were also opponents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773, Isaac Backus
Isaac Backus
Isaac Backus was a leading Baptist preacher during the era of the American Revolution who campaigned against state-established churches in New England....
, a prominent Baptist minister in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
's influential Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the state's law...
was enacted in 1786, five years before the Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
.
Most Anglican ministers, and many Anglicans, were Loyalists
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
. The Anglican establishment, where it had existed, largely ceased to function during the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, though the new States did not formally abolish and replace it until some years after the Revolution.
Jefferson, Madison, and the "wall of separation"
The phrase "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist theologian Roger WilliamsRoger Williams (theologian)
Roger Williams was an English Protestant theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America,...
, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
, in his 1644 book The Bloody Tenent of Persecution. The phrase was later used by Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
as a description of the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists
Baptists in the history of separation of church and state
Separation of church and state is one of the primary theological distinctions of the Baptist tradition.-History:Originally, Baptists supported separation of church and state in England and America...
(a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the Congregationalist church
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
):
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that 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," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
Jefferson's letter was in reply to a letter that he had received from the Danbury Baptist Association dated October 7, 1801. In an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists, Jefferson would use the same theme:
We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.
Jefferson and James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
's conceptions of separation have long been debated. Jefferson refused to issue Proclamations of Thanksgiving sent to him by Congress during his presidency, though he did issue a Thanksgiving and Prayer proclamation as Governor of Virginia. Madison issued four religious proclamations while President, but vetoed two bills on the grounds they violated the first amendment. On the other hand, both Jefferson and Madison attended religious services at the Capitol. Years before the ratification of the Constitution, Madison contended "Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body." After retiring from the presidency, Madison wrote of "total separation of the church from the state." "Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States," Madison wrote, and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States." In a letter to Edward Livingston
Edward Livingston
Edward Livingston was an American jurist and statesman. He was an influential figure in the drafting of the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825, a civil code based largely on the Napoleonic Code. He represented both New York, and later Louisiana in Congress and he served as the U.S...
Madison further expanded, "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." Madison's original draft of the Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
had included provisions binding the States, as well as the Federal Government, from an establishment of religion, but the House did not pass them.
Jefferson's opponents said his position was the destruction and the governmental rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature. In setting up the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, Jefferson encouraged all the separate sects to have preachers of their own, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the state's law...
. Some have argued that this arrangement was "fully compatible with Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state;" however,
others point to Jefferson’s support for a scheme in which students at the University would attend religious worship each morning as evidence that his views were not consistent with strict separation. Still other scholars, such as Mark David Hall
Mark David Hall
Mark David Hall is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics at George Fox University, and the author of a number of books on religion and politics in American life. The majority of his research has been in religion in the American founding era...
, attempt to sidestep the whole issue by arguing that American jurisprudence focuses too narrowly on this one Jeffersonian letter while failing to account for other relevant history
Jefferson's letter entered American jurisprudence in the 1878 Mormon polygamy case Reynolds v. U.S., in which the court cited Jefferson and Madison, seeking a legal definition for the word religion. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Johnson Field
Stephen Johnson Field
Stephen Johnson Field was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897...
cited Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists to state that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order."
Considering this, the court ruled that outlawing polygamy was constitutional.
Patrick Henry, Massachusetts, and Connecticut
Jefferson and Madison's approach was not the only one taken in the eighteenth century. Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom was drafted in opposition to a bill, chiefly supported by Patrick HenryPatrick Henry
Patrick Henry was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786...
, which would permit any Virginian to belong to any denomination, but which would require him to belong to some denomination and pay taxes to support it. Similarly, the Constitution of Massachusetts originally provided that "no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience... provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship," (Article II) but also that:
the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.
And the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend. (Article III)
Since, in practice, this meant that the decision of who was taxable for a particular religion rested in the hands of the selectmen, usually Congregationalists, this system was open to abuse. It was abolished in 1833. The intervening period is sometimes referred to as an "establishment of religion" in Massachusetts.
The Duke of York
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
had required that every community in his new lands of New York and New Jersey support some church, but this was more often Dutch Reformed, Quaker or Presbyterian, than Anglican. Some chose to support more than one church. He also ordained that the tax-payers were free, having paid his local tax, to choose their own church. The terms for the surrender of New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
had provided that the Dutch would have liberty of conscience, and the Duke, as an openly divine-right Catholic, was no friend of Anglicanism. The first Anglican minister in New Jersey arrived in 1698, though Anglicanism was more popular in New York.
Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
had a real establishment of religion. Its citizens
did not adopt a constitution at the Revolution, but rather amended their Charter to remove all references to the British Government. As a result, the Congregational Church continued to be established, and Yale College
Yale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
, at that time a Congregational institution, received grants from the State until Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 partly because of this issue.
Test acts
The absence of an establishment of religion did not necessarily imply that all men were free to hold office. Most colonies had a Test ActTest Act
The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and Nonconformists...
, and several states retained them for a short time. This stood in contrast to the Federal Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the employment of any religious test for Federal office, and which through the Fourteenth Amendment later extended this prohibition to the States.
For example, the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 provides liberty of conscience in much the same language as Massachusetts (similarly forbidding payment of "taxes, tithes or other payments" contrary to conscience). It then provides:
That there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow subjects.
This would permit a Test Act
Test Act
The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and Nonconformists...
, but did not require one.
The original charter of the Province of East Jersey had restricted membership in the Assembly to Christians; the Duke of York was fervently Catholic, and the proprietors of Perth Amboy, New Jersey
Perth Amboy, New Jersey
Perth Amboy is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. The City of Perth Amboy is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 50,814. Perth Amboy is known as the "City by the Bay", referring to Raritan Bay.-Name:The Lenape...
were Scottish Catholic peers. The Province of West Jersey had declared, in 1681, that there should be no religious test for office. An oath had also been imposed on the militia during the French and Indian War
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...
requiring them to abjure the pretensions of the Pope, which may or may not have been applied during the Revolution. That law was replaced by 1799.
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776
Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was the state's first constitution following the Declaration of Independence, and has been described as the most democratic in America. It was drafted by Robert Whitehill, Timothy Matlack, Dr. Thomas Young, George Bryan, James Cannon, and Benjamin Franklin...
provided:
And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:
- I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration.
And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State.
Again, it provided in general that all tax-paying freemen and their sons shall be able to vote, and that no
"man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship."
Article 6
Article Six of the United States ConstitutionArticle Six of the United States Constitution
Article Six of the United States Constitution establishes the Constitution and the laws and treaties of the United States made in accordance with it as the supreme law of the land, forbids a religious test as a requirement for holding a governmental position and holds the United States under the...
provides that "no religious Test
Religious test
The Test Act of 1673 in England obligated all persons filling any office, civil or military, to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance, to subscribe to a declaration against transubstantiation, and to receive the sacrament within three months of taking office....
shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". Prior to the adoption of the Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
, this was the only mention of religion in the Constitution.
The First Amendment
The first amendment to the US Constitution states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" The two parts, known as the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause" respectively, form the textual basis for the Supreme Court's interpretations of the "separation of church and state" doctrine.The First Congress' deliberations show that its understanding of the separation of church and state differed sharply from that of their contemporaries in Europe. As 19th century Union Theological Seminary historian Philip Schaff observed:
“The American separation of church and state rests upon respect for the church; the [European anticlerical] separation, on indifference and hatred of the church, and of religion itself…. The constitution did not create a nation, nor its religion and institutions. It found them already existing, and was framed for the purpose of protecting them under a republican form of government, in a rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
An August 15, 1789 entry in Madison’s papers indicates he intended for the establishment clause to prevent the government imposition of religious beliefs on individuals. The entry says: “Mr. Madison said he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience....”
Some legal scholars, such as John Baker of LSU
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
, theorize that Madison’s initial proposed language—that Congress should make no law regarding the establishment of a “national religion”—was rejected by the House, in favor of the more general “religion” in an effort to appease the Anti-Federalists. To both the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists, the very word "national" was a cause for alarm because of the experience under the British crown. During the debate over the establishment clause, Rep. Elbridge Gerry
Elbridge Gerry
Elbridge Thomas Gerry was an American statesman and diplomat. As a Democratic-Republican he was selected as the fifth Vice President of the United States , serving under James Madison, until his death a year and a half into his term...
of Massachusetts took issue with Madison’s language regarding whether the government was a national
Central government
A central government also known as a national government, union government and in federal states, the federal government, is the government at the level of the nation-state. The structure of central governments varies from institution to institution...
or federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
(in which the states retained their individual sovereignty), which Baker suggests compelled Madison to withdraw his language from the debate.
Following the argument between Madison and Gerry, Rep. Samuel Livermore
Samuel Livermore
Samuel Livermore was a U.S. politician. He was a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire from 1793 to 1801 and served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate in 1796 and again in 1799....
of New Hampshire proposed language stating that, “Congress shall make no laws touching religion or the rights of conscience.” This raised an uproar from members, such as Rep. Benjamin Huntingdon of Connecticut and Rep. Peter Sylvester of New York, who worried the language could be used to harm religious practice.
Others, such as Rep. Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman was an early American lawyer and politician, as well as a founding father. He served as the first mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, and served on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and was also a representative and senator in the new republic...
of Connecticut, believed the clause was unnecessary because the original Constitution only gave Congress stated powers
Enumerated powers
The enumerated powers are a list of items found in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution that set forth the authoritative capacity of the United States Congress. In summary, Congress may exercise the powers that the Constitution grants it, subject to explicit restrictions in the Bill of...
, which did not include establishing a national religion.
Anti-Federalists such as Rep. Thomas Tucker
Thomas Tudor Tucker
Thomas Tudor Tucker was an American physician and politician from Charleston, South Carolina. He represented South Carolina in both the Continental Congress and the U.S. House. He later served as Treasurer of the United States.-Biography:Thomas was born in St...
of South Carolina moved to strike the establishment clause completely because it could preempt the religious clauses in the state constitutions. However, the Anti-Federalists were unsuccessful in persuading the House of Representatives to drop the clause from the first amendment.
The Senate went through several more narrowly targeted versions before reaching the contemporary language. One version read, “Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to others, nor shall freedom of conscience be infringed,” while another read, “Congress shall make no law establishing one particular religious denomination in preference to others.” Ultimately, the Senate rejected the more narrowly targeted language.
At the time of the passage of the Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
, many states acted in ways that would now be held unconstitutional. All of the early official state churches were disestablished by 1833 (Massachusetts), including the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
. It is commonly accepted that, under the doctrine of Incorporation
Incorporation (Bill of Rights)
The incorporation of the Bill of Rights is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government...
- which uses the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
to hold the Bill of Rights applicable to the states - these state churches could not be reestablished today.
The 14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionFourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
(Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. It includes the due process and equal protection
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...
clauses among others. The amendment introduces the concept of incorporation
Incorporation (Bill of Rights)
The incorporation of the Bill of Rights is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government...
of all relevant federal rights against the states. While it has not been fully implemented, the doctrine of incorporation has been used to ensure, through the Due Process Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause
Privileges and Immunities Clause
The Privileges and Immunities Clause prevents a state from treating citizens of other states in a discriminatory manner...
, the application of most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to the states.
The incorporation of the First Amendment establishment clause in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which applied the religion clauses in the country's Bill of Rights to state as well as federal law...
has impacted the subsequent interpretation of the separation of church and state in regard to the state governments. Although upholding the state law in that case, which provided for public busing to private religious schools, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment establishment clause was fully applicable to the state governments. A more recent case involving the application of this principle against the states was Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994).
The "Separation" principle and the Supreme Court
Jefferson's concept of "separation of church and state" first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudenceJurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, "The word 'religion' is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning, and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted." The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the "separation" paragraph from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, "coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured."
The centrality of the "separation" concept to the Religion Clauses of the Constitution was made explicit in Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education
Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which applied the religion clauses in the country's Bill of Rights to state as well as federal law...
, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case dealing with a New Jersey law that allowed government funds to pay for transportation of students to both public and Catholic schools. This was the first case in which the court applied the Establishment Clause to the laws of a state, having interpreted the due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
as applying the Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
to the states as well as the federal legislature. Citing Jefferson, the court concluded that "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
While the decision (with four dissents) ultimately upheld the state law allowing the funding of transportation of students to religious schools, the majority opinion (by Justice Hugo Black
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
) and the dissenting opinions (by Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge
Wiley Blount Rutledge
Wiley Blount Rutledge, Jr. was an American educator, lawyer, and justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.-Early life:...
and Justice Robert H. Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was United States Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials...
) each explicitly stated that the Constitution has erected a "wall between church and state" or a "separation of Church from State": their disagreement was limited to whether this case of state funding of transportation to religious schools breached that wall. Rutledge, on behalf of the four dissenting justices, took the position that the majority had indeed permitted a violation of the wall of separation in this case: "Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth." Writing separately, Justice Jackson argued that "[T]here are no good grounds upon which to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters."
In 1962, the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
addressed the issue of officially-sponsored prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
or religious recitations in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale
Engel v. Vitale
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that determined that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools....
, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court, by a vote of 6-1, determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when the prayer is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. (The prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents
Board of Regents
In the United States, a board often governs public institutions of higher education, which include both state universities and community colleges. In each US state, such boards may govern either the state university system, individual colleges and universities, or both. In general they operate as...
prior to the Court's decision consisted of: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.") As the Court stated:
The petitioners contend, among other things, that the state laws requiring or permitting use of the Regents' prayer must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs. For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State. We agree with that contention, since we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America." The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...
, objected to the court's embrace of the "wall of separation" metaphor: "I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the "wall of separation," a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."
In Epperson v. Arkansas
Epperson v. Arkansas
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 , was a United States Supreme Court case that invalidated an Arkansas statute that prohibited the teaching of human evolution in the public schools...
, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), the Supreme Court considered an Arkansas law that made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory in any school or university that received public funds. The court's opinion, written by Justice Abe Fortas
Abe Fortas
Abraham Fortas was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice from 1965 to 1969. Originally from Tennessee, Fortas became a law professor at Yale, and subsequently advised the Securities and Exchange Commission. He then worked at the Interior Department under Franklin D...
, ruled that the Arkansas law violated "the constitutional prohibition of state laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." The court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and that "[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them."
In Lemon v. Kurtzman
Lemon v. Kurtzman
Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Pennsylvania's 1968 Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allowed the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to reimburse nonpublic schools for the salaries of teachers who...
, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the court determined that a Pennsylvania state policy of reimbursing the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in religious schools or the costs of secular instructional materials in religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. The court's decision argued that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable," the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."
Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "Lemon Test". First, the law or policy must have been adopted with a neutral or non-religious purpose. Second, the principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute or policy must not result in an "excessive entanglement" of government with religion. (The decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman hinged upon the conclusion that the government benefits were flowing disproportionately to Catholic schools, and that Catholic schools were an integral component of the Catholic Church's religious mission, thus the policy involved the state in an "excessive entanglement" with religion.) Failure to meet any of these criteria is a proof that the statute or policy in question violates the Establishment Clause.
In 2002, a three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
held that classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in a California public school was unconstitutional, even when students were not compelled to recite it, due to the inclusion of the phrase "under God." In reaction to the case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow
Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow
Newdow v. United States Congress, Elk Grove Unified School District, et al., 542 U.S. 1 , was a lawsuit originally filed in 2000 which led to a 2002 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are an endorsement of...
, both houses of Congress passed measures reaffirming their support for the pledge, and condemning the panel's ruling. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case was ultimately overturned in June 2004, solely on procedural grounds not related to the substantive constitutional issue. Rather, a five-justice majority held that Newdow, a non-custodial parent suing on behalf of his daughter, lacked standing
Standing (law)
In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case...
to sue.
When the Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
state legislature passed a law requiring public school biology teachers to give Creationism
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
and Evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
equal time in the classroom, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it was intended to advance a particular religion, and did not serve the secular purpose of improved scientific education.
(See also: Creation and evolution in public education
Creation and evolution in public education
The status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate in legal, political, and religious circles...
)
The display of the Ten Commandments as part of courthouse displays was considered in a group of cases decided in summer of 2005, including McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky
McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky
McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, , is a case which was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 2, 2005. At issue is whether government-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.In a suit...
and Van Orden v. Perry
Van Orden v. Perry
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, involving whether a display of the Ten Commandments on a monument given to the government at the Texas State Capitol in Austin violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.In a...
. While parties on both sides hoped for a reformulation or clarification of the Lemon test, the two rulings ended with narrow 5-4 and opposing decisions, with Justice Stephen Breyer
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....
the swing vote.
On December 20, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Kentucky* Western District of Kentucky...
ruled in the case of ACLU v. Mercer County that the continued display of the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
as part of a larger display on American legal traditions in a Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
courthouse was allowed, because the purpose of the display (educating the public on American legal traditions) was secular in nature. In ruling on the Mount Soledad cross controversy
Mount Soledad cross controversy
The Mount Soledad cross is a -tall cross that was erected in 1954 on top of Mount Soledad in La Jolla, California....
on May 3, 2006, however, a federal judge ruled that the cross on public property on Mount Soledad
Mount Soledad
Mount Soledad is a prominent landmark in the city of San Diego, California, United States. The mountaintop is the site of the Mount Soledad cross, the subject of a continuing controversy over the involvement of religion in government.- Geography :...
must be removed.
The Treaty of Tripoli
In 1797, the United States SenateUnited States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
ratified a treaty with Tripoli
Tripoli
Tripoli is the capital and largest city in Libya. It is also known as Western Tripoli , to distinguish it from Tripoli, Lebanon. It is affectionately called The Mermaid of the Mediterranean , describing its turquoise waters and its whitewashed buildings. Tripoli is a Greek name that means "Three...
that stated in Article 11:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Because Article VI, clause 2 of the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
renders ratified treaties "the supreme Law of the Land", supporters of the separation of church and state believe the Treaty of Tripoli confirms that the government of the United States was specifically intended to be religiously neutral.
Interpretive controversies
Some scholars and organizations disagree with the notion of "separation of church and state", or the way the Supreme Court has interpreted the constitutional limitation on religious establishment. Such critics generally argue that the phrase misrepresents the textual requirements of the Constitution, while noting that many aspects of church and state were intermingled at the time the Constitution was ratified. These critics argue that a complete separation of church and state could not have been intended by the constitutional framers. Some of the intermingling between church and state include religious references in official contexts, and such other founding documents as the United States Declaration of IndependenceUnited States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
, which references the idea of a "Creator" and "Nature's God", though these references did not ultimately appear in the Constitution nor do they mention any particular religious view of a "Creator" or "Nature's God."
These critics of the modern separation of church and state also note the official establishment of religion in several of the states at the time of ratification, to suggest that the modern incorporation of the Establishment Clause as to state governments goes against the original constitutional intent. The issue is complex, however, as the incorporation ultimately bases on the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, at which point the first amendment's application to the state government was recognized. Many of these constitutional debates relate to the competing interpretive theories of originalism
Originalism
In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a principle of interpretation that tries to discover the original meaning or intent of the constitution. It is based on the principle that the judiciary is not supposed to create, amend or repeal laws but only to uphold...
versus modern, progressivist
Progressivism in the United States
Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large...
theories such as the doctrine of the Living Constitution
Living Constitution
The Living Constitution is a concept in America, also referred to as loose constructionism, constitutional interpretation which claims that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning or that it has the properties of a human in the sense that it changes...
.
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
appointees. Religious beliefs or the lack of them have therefore not been permissible tests or qualifications with regard to federal employees since the ratification of the Constitution. Seven states, however, have language included in their Bill of Rights, Declaration of Rights, or in the body of their constitutions that require state office-holders to have particular religious beliefs. These states are Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
The required beliefs of these clauses include belief in a Supreme Being and belief in a future state of rewards and punishments. (Tennessee Constitution Article IX, Section 2 is one such example.) Some of these same states specify that the oath of office include the words "so help me God." In some cases these beliefs (or oaths) were historically required of jurors and witnesses in court. At one time, such restrictions were allowed under the doctrine of states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
; today they are deemed to be in violation of the federal First Amendment, as applied to the states via the 14th amendment, and hence unconstitutional and unenforceable.
While sometimes questioned as possible violations of separation, the appointment of official chaplain
Chaplain
Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...
s for government functions, voluntary prayer meetings at the Department of Justice outside of duty hours, voluntary prayer at meals in U.S. armed forces
Armed forces
The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...
, inclusion of the (optional) phrase "so help me God" in the oaths for many elected offices, FBI agents, etc., have been held not to violate the First Amendment, since they fall within the realm of free exercise of religion.
Relaxed zoning rules and special parking privileges for churches, the tax-free status of church property, the fact that Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
is a federal holiday, etc., have also been questioned, but have been considered examples of the governmental prerogative in deciding practical and beneficial arrangements for the society. The national motto "In God We Trust
In God We Trust
"In God We Trust" was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956. It is also the motto of the U.S. state of Florida. The Legality of this motto has been questioned because of the United States Constitution forbidding the government to make any law respecting the establishment of a...
" has been challenged as a violation, but the Supreme Court has ruled that ceremonial deism
Ceremonial deism
Ceremonial deism is a legal term used in the United States for nominally religious statements and practices deemed to be merely ritual and non-religious through long customary usage. Proposed examples of ceremonial deism include the reference to God introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in...
is not religious in nature.
Jeffries and Ryan (2001) argue that the modern concept of separation of church and state dates from the mid-twentieth century rulings of the Supreme Court. The central point, they argue, was a constitutional ban against aid to religious schools, followed by a later ban on religious observance in public education. Jeffries and Ryan argue that these two propositions - that public aid should not go to religious schools and that public schools should not be religious - make up the separationist position of the modern Establishment Clause.
Jeffries and Ryan argue that no-aid position drew support from a coalition of separationist opinion. Most important was "the pervasive secularism that came to dominate American public life," which sought to confine religion to a private sphere. Further, the ban against government aid to religious schools was supported before 1970 by most Protestants, who opposed aid to religious schools, which were mostly Catholic at the time. After 1980, however, anti-Catholic
Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents...
sentiment has diminished among mainline Protestants, and the crucial coalition of public secularists and Protestant churches has collapsed. While mainline Protestant denominations are more inclined towards strict separation of church and state, much evangelical opinion has now largely deserted that position. As a consequence, strict separationism is opposed today by members of many Protestant faiths, even perhaps eclipsing the opposition of Roman Catholics.
Critics of the modern concept of the "separation of church and state" argue that it is untethered to anything in the text of the constitution and is contrary to the conception of the phrase as the Founding Fathers understood it. Philip Hamburger
Philip Hamburger
Philip Hamburger is an American legal scholar.Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at the Columbia University School of Law. He is a legal historian and a scholar of constitutional law. Before moving to Columbia, Hamburger was John P...
, Columbia Law school professor and prominent critic of the modern understanding of the concept, maintains that the modern concept, which deviates from the constitutional establishment clause jurisprudence, is rooted in American anti-Catholicism and Nativism
Nativism (politics)
Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture....
. Briefs before the Supreme Court, including by the U.S. government, have argued that some state constitutional amendments relating to the modern conception of separation of church and state (Blaine Amendments) were motivated by and intended to enact anti-Catholicism.
J. Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee, responded to Hamburger's claims noting; "The fact that the separation of church and state has been supported by some who exhibited an anti-Catholic animus or a secularist bent does not impugn the validity of the principle. Champions of religious liberty have argued for the separation of church and state for reasons having nothing to do with anti-Catholicism or desire for a secular culture. Of course, separationists have opposed the Catholic Church when it has sought to tap into the public till to support its parochial schools or to argue for on-campus released time in the public schools. But that principled debate on the issues does not support a charge of religious bigotry"
Steven Waldman notes that; "The evangelicals provided the political muscle for the efforts of Madison and Jefferson, not merely because they wanted to block official churches but because they wanted to keep the spiritual and secular worlds apart." “Religious freedom resulted from an alliance of unlikely partners,” writes the historian Frank Lambert in his book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. “New Light evangelicals such as Isaac Bachus and John Leland
John Leland (Baptist)
John Leland was a Baptist minister in Massachusetts and Virginia. He was an important figure in the struggle for religious liberty in the United States. Leland was also an outspoken critic of slavery...
joined forces with Deists and skeptics such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to fight for a complete separation of church and state.”
Politics and religion in the United States
Robert N. BellahRobert N. Bellah
Robert Neelly Bellah is an American sociologist, now the Elliott Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Bellah is best known for his work related to "American civil religion"...
has argued in his writings that although the separation of church and state is grounded firmly in the constitution of the United States, this does not mean that there is no religious dimension in the political society of the United States. He used the term "Civil Religion
Civil religion
The intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator...
" to describe the specific relation between politics and religion in the United States. His 1967 article analyzes the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
: "Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in using the word 'God' at all? The answer is that the separation of church and state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension."
Robert S. Wood
Robert S. Wood
Robert S. Wood has had a career in the dual areas of state and religion, both as a leader and advisor to senior civilian and military officials of the United States Government in the area of National security affairs, and as a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .- Personal...
has argued that the United States is a model for the world in terms of how a separation of church and state—no state-run or state-established church—is good for both the church and the state, allowing a variety of religions to flourish. Speaking at the Toronto-based Center for New Religions, Wood said that the freedom of conscience and assembly allowed under such a system has led to a "remarkable religiosity" in the United States that isn't present in other industrialized nations. Wood believes that the U.S. operates on "a sort of civic religion," which includes a generally-shared belief in a creator who "expects better of us." Beyond that, individuals are free to decide how they want to believe and fill in their own creeds and express their conscience. He calls this approach the "genius of religious sentiment in the United States."
See also
- American Center for Law & Justice
- Americans United for Separation of Church and StateAmericans United for Separation of Church and StateAmericans United for Separation of Church and State is a group that advocates separation of church and state, a legal doctrine interpreted by AU as being enshrined in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.-Mission:The guiding principle of Americans...
- American Humanist AssociationAmerican Humanist AssociationThe American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. "Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that...
- Anti-clericalismAnti-clericalismAnti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
- The Becket Fund for Religious LibertyThe Becket Fund for Religious LibertyThe Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that describes itself as "a non-profit, public interest law firm defending the freedom of religion of people of all faiths." The Becket Fund operates in three arenas: in the courts of law , in the court of...
- Ceremonial deismCeremonial deismCeremonial deism is a legal term used in the United States for nominally religious statements and practices deemed to be merely ritual and non-religious through long customary usage. Proposed examples of ceremonial deism include the reference to God introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in...
- Christian amendmentChristian amendmentThe phrase Christian amendment refers to any of several attempts to insert explicit Christian ideas and language into the United States Constitution...
- Christian LeftChristian leftThe Christian left is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice....
- Christian RightChristian rightChristian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
- Freedom From Religion FoundationFreedom From Religion FoundationThe Freedom From Religion Foundation is an American freethought organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. Its purposes, as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the separation of church and state and to educate the public on matters relating to atheism, agnosticism and nontheism. The FFRF publishes...
- Freedom of religion in the United StatesFreedom of religion in the United StatesIn the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally guaranteed right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion is also closely associated with separation of church and state, a concept advocated by Thomas Jefferson....
- Interfaith Alliance
- Mount Soledad cross controversyMount Soledad cross controversyThe Mount Soledad cross is a -tall cross that was erected in 1954 on top of Mount Soledad in La Jolla, California....
- Public menorahPublic menorahA public menorah is a large menorah displayed publicly during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. It is done to celebrate the holiday and publicize the miracle of Hanukkah, and is typically accompanied by a public event during one of the nights of Hanukkah attended by invited dignitaries who are...
- Separation of church and stateSeparation of church and stateThe concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
- ShariaShariaSharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
- State religionState religionA state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...
- United States religious history
American court battles over separation
- 1947, first case concerning separation of church and state; supporting bussing for children to private religious schools and declaring that states were required to provide the same guarantees of religious freedom as the federal government
- 1948, banning religious instruction in public schools
- 1952, allowing religious instruction off school property during regular school hours
- 1962, banning teacher-led prayer from public schools
- 1963, banning Bible-reading and the recital of the Lord's Prayer in public schools
- 1973, allowing state funding for textbooks and teachers' salaries in religious schools; creating the Lemon test
- 1987, declared the Creation Act invalid, which had mandated the teaching of Creation if Evolution was taught
- 1989, banning religious displays depicting only one religion
- 1992, banning prayers given by clergy as a part of an official public school graduation ceremony.
Other
- Christian Science Monitor analysis of George Washington's letter and its implications
- "The Intellectual Origins of the Establishment Clause" by Noah Feldman, Asst. Professor of Law, New York University, 2002.
- Robert Struble, Jr., Treatise on Twelve Lights: To Restore America the Beautiful under God and the Written Constitution, 2007-08 edition.
- Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
- Separation of Church and State
- Unique Presidential speech: President Ronald Reagan uses report of Navy Chaplain, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, for keynote address, rejecting argument that military chaplains violate separation of church and state, Text version; Video version
- Misunderstanding Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor