To begin with, the term "Separation of Church and State" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution; try as you might, you will not find it...ANYWHERE.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment doesn't even imply such a thing. It only states that the federal government cannot favor or establish a national religion, such as the case in Europe where the church is always in the governments business. Because of the dumbing down of children in our nation's schools, a vast majority of Americans don't even realize that, prior to the colonies becoming states, each colony already had an established religion. In fact, when the colonies became states, seven of them still had established religions. Thomas Jefferson was successful at dissolving Virginia's state religion in 1786, other states following suit soon after.
As a matter of fact, While Thomas Jefferson was a state legislator, he tried to pass a bill for a state "day of prayer". When he was elected as president, he was asked if he would do the same thing and he stated unequivocally that the FEDERAL government had NO authority to proclaim ANY religious holidays.
Justice Joseph Story clarified this amendment when he said that religious laws are left to the states,
“It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. The situation, too, of the different states equally proclaimed the policy, as well as the necessity of such an exclusion. In some of the states, episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in others, quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.”
Americans must understand that simply looking at the Constitution isn't enough. They must read the Founders personal letters and arguments when dealing with these matters. For instance, James Madison argued that the stated goal was to give legal rights to all religions and the government should not show preference of one over others. In his famous "Memorial and Remonstrance", he stated,
Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
In other words, if the federal government can establish a national religion, then they will have the authority to force it on others and this was counter intuitive to the stated goal of the Constitution.
How, when and why has this term come to be misused and abused?
For starters, we need to understand where the term came from. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson stated in part,
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.
He was talking about the "state" as a whole in regards to the First Amendment, not the individual states. Recall his attempt at establishing a day of prayer while he was a state legislator and what he said when he was president of the United States. This is where the metaphor of Wall of Separation came from.
Jefferson's terminology was perverted by Justice Hugo Black in a 1947 Supreme Court ruling, Everson v. Board of Education. American University professor Daniel Dreisbach asserts that his ruling was due to his anti-Catholicism learned in the Ku Klux Klan. In the ruling, Justice Black cited the phrase "wall of separation between Church and State" from Jefferson's Jan. 1,1802, letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.
To read more about this ruling, please visit, Justice Black's bigotry gets misread as Jefferson's belief: scholars challenge the theory of separation of church and state as a mid-20th century myth concocted by ideologues by Larry Witham.
So, the next time you run into another one of these fallacious arguments in regards to Separation of Church and State, refer back to this article.
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