Separation of church and state: the American myth that may become reality
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Version 0 of 1. When Rick Santorum said at the weekend that John F Kennedy's views on the separation of church and state made him want to throw up, this was a religious argument – but not because both men were Catholics. It was because both were Americans, and the separation of church and state is one of the foundational myths of America. By "myth" I don't mean that it never happened but that it appears to Americans as a historical fact that establishes an eternal moral truth. The "is" and the "ought" of it can't be split. The original constitution does not mention God at all. But this omission shouldn't be taken as meaning that God was unimportant to the founders. The secularism of the constitution was the product of a peculiarly American alliance between enlightenment freethinkers or deists, like Jefferson, and evangelicals suspicious of all established churches. Susan Jacoby, in her history of American atheism, draws attention to article 6, section 3 of the constitution, which says that "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". This was written at a time when many states followed the English example in disenfranchising Catholics, Jews and – of course – atheists. The underlying justification always contained the idea that these people could not be trusted, for they did not acknowledge the same authority as Protestants did. This is actually a quite central political problem: civilised society depends on trust, which in turn seems to depend on a shared sense of the sacred. That is why witnesses were compelled to swear on a Bible in court. The founders wrote an astonishing solution to the problem into the constitution. Instead of swearing allegiance to God, or to his appointed authorities, federal officials would be bound "by Oath or Affirmation" to the constitution itself. "By affirmation" means that those who could not or would not swear on the Christian Bible could not be forced to do so. So, from the very beginning, the truly sacred document in American life was not the Bible, but the constitution itself. But the constitution was read as scripture, through a profoundly biblical lens. The declaration of independence even starts with a creation myth of sorts: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." A sceptic would point out that you have to hold these truths as "self-evident", since that's the only sort of evidence they'll ever have. The other founding document of the separation of church and state is the so-called establishment clause of the Bill of Rights, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". This was written from the tradition of evangelical Protestants for whom no state made by sinful men could ever be holy enough for God. But they never doubted that America's mission in the world was to redeem it. Nor do their successors today – even when they are atheists. This leads to problems. When Americans disagree – when they hate each other – about what the separation of church and state should mean, they are disagreeing about the constitution, which is their real scripture. And, like all others, their scripture is self-contradictory. Of the two foundations on which the American separation of church and state is built – the establishment clause and the rejection of any religious test for federal office – one seems to preserve the state from religious influence and the other to preserve religion from the influence of the state. The two aims don't have a natural balance and in the past 50 years the balance between them has shifted against the state. John F Kennedy won his presidential election only after he had, in effect, promised to obey the constitution rather than the pope. He said then: <blockquote>"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish – where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source." </blockquote> This is what made Santorum want to throw up. Jimmy Carter, a Baptist Sunday school teacher, was the most recent president to hold to that understanding of the separation. Since then, the Southern Baptists and some Catholics (like Santorum) have moved to a much more theocratic interpretation. Even the patrician George Bush the elder doubted (despite the constitution) that an atheist should be president. Republicans now seem to argue only over whether the pope or the National Evangelical Association should have the greater influence on government. Demography suggests that this will pass. Younger Americans are increasingly irreligious. They see the separation as protecting government from religion and this election may show that's the way this pendulum is now swinging. • Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree |