Thomas Jefferson on our “Christian Nation”
This past week I heard an interesting interview on The Al Franken Show, with Brooke Allen, author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. She is a historian who was tired of hearing Christian conservatives talking about how America is a “Christian Nation.” Her research shows that our Founding Fathers were pretty vehemently against any role for organized religion in our civic life.
More than a few politicians and conservative religious figures have offered statements to the effect that there really is no “wall of separation between church and state” in the Constitution, and even if you can interpret the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as such, it really wasn’t the intent of the Founders to create such a wall.
Professor Allen dug up a fascinating quote from Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association on January 1, 1802:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & State.
I tend to think that Jefferson knew a thing or two about what the Founders really meant. So when you hear someone say that the separation between church and state is the construction of “activist judges,” you can be assured they’re full of it.
September 3rd, 2010 at 8:17 am
You can always take someone’s words out of context. You have done so here. If you continue to read Jefferson’s letters (5 total) to Danbury, you’ll learn that the “Wall” he was referring to was the inability for the Federal government to sanction ANY religion. The founders left England where they were required to be members of the official religion. There was no choice. That is why the “wall” referred to was built. It was never intended to otherwise limit religion. So by justifying separation between church and state using this out of context quote, you are misleading the reader. The founding father’s purpose was to protect churches FROM government, not to exclude God IN government.
December 19th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Sorry jklbus, but it’s you who are selectively reading and interpreting. Jefferson was clear that protecting churches from government was part of it, but he was also concerned about protecting government from the undue influence of religious leaders who would use the government to advance their particular religious view. Allowing the god of any religion into a position of government favor necessarily undermines the god of any other religious, and that’s inherently anti-liberty… and Jefferson knew it. And said so: