Church and State

There's a debate about the religious convictions of the founding fathers (and mothers). Some of my friends of the political right argue that our country was founded on Christian principles and therefore it's a good thing to mingle religion with government. My left wing friends counter that the nation was created by Deists and the wall between church and state must be high and absolute.

Rather than carry on a dialog of the deaf, I think we should let the founders speak for themselves. What follows is a series of quotations by the founders, taken from "The Founders on Religion" edited by James H. Hutson.

"The Institutions in New England for the Support of Religion, Morals and Decency, exceed any other, obliging every Parish to have a Minister, and every Person to go to Meeting."

John Adams to Abigail Adams, 10/29/1775

"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 eternal separation between church and state."

Thomas Jefferson, draft letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1/1/1802

"(I)t may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation, between the rights of Religion & the Civil authority. . . The tendency to a usurpation on one side, or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded against by an entire abstinence of the Government from interference, in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order & protecting each sect against trespasses on the legal rights of others."

James Madison to Jasper James, 9/1833

"Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the clergy who are now so active in settling the political affairs of the world: 'Cease from your political labors - your kingdom is not of this world. Read my Epistles. In no part of them will you perceive me aiming to depose a pagan emperor or to place a Christian upon a throne. . . .' Human governments may receive support from Christianity, but it must be only from the love of justice and peace. . ."

Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, 10/6/1800

"Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to Heaven, which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception."

George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, 8/15/1787

"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire."

John Witherspoon, 5/17/1776

These are only a few remarks by the founding generation, and often the men we look up to so much changed their minds during their lives. John Adams, for example, was or became a Unitarian, and made numerous critical comments on organized denominations. Thomas Jefferson sat in the White House cutting up the gospels, deleting anything he figured Jesus didn't actually say. On the other hand, certainly all the founders emerged from a culture in which Christianity was embedded, and greatly influenced them.

So, there does not seem to be a consensus among the people who gave us the Revolution and the Constitution. That being so, I think it's a mistake to blur whatever the distinction is between the world of faith and the secular world.

(In the original texts, the words in bold type here were underlined.)