Church and state separation

Published 10:48 am Monday, October 13, 2008

That America was “founded to give religious freedom to everyone” is a nationalist myth that today causes a good amount of confusion and some harm. There cannot be religious freedom in America until we understand and practice the freedom for religion that was eventually formulated by the United States.

The American colonists, those who later declared independence, came for freedom, to be sure, but largely political and economic freedom. Many, but not all, came for religious freedom. Many of those who did, came for freedom for themselves and their parochial religion but were uninterested in freedom for other religions. A few actually came for freedom from religion.

It took a curiously long time for political officials to legislate and the people to accept an actual separation of church and state.

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Of the 13 “original colonies,” which became the initial 13 united states, only one was specifically founded to ensure there would not be an established church. This was when in 1636 Roger Williams left Massachusetts and its established Congregational (Pilgrim) Church to found a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island (the first in America), but was careful the colony did not establish his church as its.

When the Declaration of Independence was issued, only four other colonies did not have established churches. In earlier colonial days, however, New York and New Jersey were de facto Dutch Reformed. Then they became unofficially Anglican (Church of England), when the British became predominate.

Five other colonies (Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia) were officially Anglican. I find it curious that the Anglicans held on to their established status in light of the fact that the Church of England had itself gained independence from the Roman Catholic Church but then would not allow independence for other protestants. (The American branch of the Anglican Communion is the Episcopal Church.)

In addition to Massachusetts, the Congregational Church was established in Connecticut and New Hampshire.

Another factor I find curious is that this church (now known, after some mergers, as the United Church of Christ) with its distinctive and strong autonomy of the local congregation (thus, the name) was unwilling to extend this polity nationally.

Maryland (which had initially been largely Roman Catholic until it became officially Anglican) and North Carolina were disestablished upon Independence. Almost shocking is that six of the established colonial churches continued established after statehood was created. Half were Anglican (Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina) and half, Congregational (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut).

The last state to disestablish was Connecticut, as late as 1818. The Congregational Church remained a state church in Connecticut for forty-two years into national independence. This is what moved the Danbury (Conn) Baptists to write to President Thomas Jefferson to gain his confirmation that the constitution logically disallows a state church. Although widely misunderstood and even misrepresented, this occasioned Jefferson’s reference in his reply to “a wall of separation between church and state.”

With two favorable references to Baptist churches, one might expect me to hold them up as paragons of liberty and independence. I should like to think Baptists would never become unfair, but Baptists have seldom been in the majority—and being in the majority does strange things to those who are.

Genuine religious freedom is not only that no government will establish a church but that none will favor one church over another or interfere with the free exercise of any religion (the two clauses of the Second Amendment to the Constitution). And of course, religious freedom means not only freedom “of religion,” but, if one chooses, freedom “from religion.”

Now the kicker in all this is if religion is not free, it might be yet religious—but, by definition, it isn’t spiritual or godly.

To eliminate the separation would be to do great harm to both church and state.