(An extremely important historical analysis of the church-state controversy.)
http://www.somareview.com/godwantawall.cfm Does God Want a Wall Between Church and State?
One group certainly thought so—18th-century evangelical Christians.
By Steven Waldman
(This essay originally appeared at Beliefnet.com.)
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...Both secular liberals who sneer at the idea that evangelicals could ever be a positive influence in politics and Christian conservatives who want to knock down the “wall” should take note: It was 18th-century evangelicals who provided the political shock troops for Jefferson and Madison in their efforts to keep government from strong involvement with religion. Modern evangelicals are certainly free to take a different course, but they should realize that in doing so they have dramatically departed from the tradition of their spiritual forefathers.
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...By equating political and religious persecution, the evangelicals helped lay the foundation for a radical political shift in the colonies.
One of the fastest growing of the evangelical groups was the Baptists, the current heart of the “religious right.” As the Baptist influence grew, so did the Anglican backlash against it. In May 1771, an Anglican minister and a sheriff interrupted one Baptist preacher’s hymn-singing, put a horsewhip in his mouth and dragged him away from the meeting to be whipped in a nearby field. In Virginia, four Baptist preachers were imprisoned for their emotional sermons. They preached to crowds through the barred windows of the jail.
As a result of this persecution, the evangelicals were strong supporters of revolution, believing that their fight for religious freedom would rise or fall with the war against political tyranny. After the revolution, they pressed their opposition to the official church establishments and their support for separation of church and state.
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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 eminent historian Frank Lambert in his excellent book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. “New Light evangelicals joined forces with Deists and skeptics such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to fight for a complete separation of church and state.”
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Today’s Christian conservatives often note that Jefferson’s famous line declaring that the first amendment had created “a wall separating church and state” was not in the Constitution but in a private letter. But in that letter, Jefferson was responding to one sent to him by a group of Baptists in Danbury, Conn. We usually read Jefferson’s side of that exchange. It’s worth re-reading what the Danbury Baptists had to say because it reminds us that for the 18th-century evangelicals, the separation of church and state was not only required by the practicalities of their minority status, but was also demanded by God. “Religions is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals,” the Baptists wrote, warning that government “dare not assume the prerogatives of Jehova and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.” Government had no business meddling in the affairs of the soul, where there is only one Ruler.
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A small group of influential evangelical historians have, of late, tried to rebut the notion that the country was founded as a Christian Republic. Mark Noll, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch, the preeminent evangelical historians, wrote a book called The Search for Christian America in which they gently, but firmly, attempted to correct a number of misconceptions that modern religious conservatives have about their own past. “The tragedy is that we come to believe that we are attuned to the wisdom of the ages,” they noted, “when in fact the sound we really hear is but an echo of our own voice.”
So far these individuals—the ones we might call the Original Intent Evangelicals—have been overshadowed by higher-profile Christian conservative leaders like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Charles Colson. These leaders insist that the Founders meant only to block the establishment of an official state religion, not to stop all government support of specific religions. Therefore, they argue, the Constitution should be read to allow vouchers for schools that teach religion, prominent displays of the Ten Commandments in government offices, even open proselytizing by military chaplains. In some cases, they go even further. The GOP-controlled Virginia House of Delegates last year passed a measure that would amend the state constitution—and override language that Jefferson himself had written—to allow prayer and proselytizing on all public property (a Senate panel ultimately killed the measure). And a plank in the 2004 Texas Republican platform declares that “the United States of America is a Christian nation” and disparages “the myth of the separation of church and state.”
Contemporary religious conservatives can certainly find quotes from Founding Fathers to support their claims that government should aggressively support religion. They’ll have a harder time finding quotes from 18th-century evangelicals. Falwell and company are free to chart a different course from earlier Christians, but they should do so with the knowledge that some very pious evangelical leaders believed this was a dangerous path. When the Rev. Falwell meets his maker, he may well get a pat on the back from Patrick Henry, but he’s sure to get a tongue lashing, and a sermon, from the Rev. Leland.
(end)
Steven Waldman is editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, the leading faith and spirituality website, and a Washington Monthly contributing editor. He is writing a book on religion and the Founding Fathers.
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