What Does Separation of Church and State Mean?

Nearly every American understands the phrase “separation of church and state.” Do you understand where it’s from? Here’s a hint: it’s not in the Constitution. John Eastman, professor of law at Chapman University, explains how and why this popular phrase has actually played such an outsized role in American life and law.

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Script:.

Practically everyone has become aware of the doctrine of the “separation of church and state.” A lot of Americans think that it’s in the United States Constitution.

However there is no such expression in the Constitution.

And there never was– for a simple factor: The Founding Fathers never ever meant for church and state to be totally separate. They saw religious beliefs– specifically, faiths based upon the Bible– as essential to the moral foundation of the nation they were producing.

Where does that expression come from? It comes from one quick letter that Thomas Jefferson composed to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.

At the end of a very long sentence in which Jefferson affirms his conviction that faith must be a private matter, and that the federal government ought to not interfere with such matters, he utilizes the expression, “building a wall of separation in between Church & State.”.

And that’s where the expression lived, undisturbed– lost in Jefferson’s abundant correspondence– for almost 150 years. But more on that in a minute.

Let’s discuss what the Constitution actually does state about faith and its role in public life. The answer is found in the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or forbiding the free workout thereof.”.

The federal government might not establish a national religion, the common practice in Europe. Americans would be free to follow the religion of their option.

When James Madison initially proposed what eventually ended up being the First Amendment, his initial phrasing was that “no religion shall be established” by Congress. But that language was later modified after it was mentioned that this may be taken to indicate that the government, consisting of the state federal governments, had no interest in religious beliefs at all. The Founders did not want this.

As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address, “Religion and morality are vital assistances of our political prosperity.” Washington’s view stayed the nation’s view throughout the 19th century and into the twentieth. That altered in 1947.

Because year, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that under the First Amendment, neither a state nor the federal government could “pass laws which assist one religion, help all faiths, or choose one faith over another.”.

For the first time in American history, the First Amendment was not just about the prohibition of developing a nationwide religion, it was also about not giving any encouragement to any religious beliefs.

The contemporary “stringent separation” view was born. And where did the 5 justices try to find support for their argument? Not the Constitution– due to the fact that there was absolutely nothing in the Constitution to assist them, but to that one phrase Thomas Jefferson wrote back in 1802.

How paradoxical that the author of the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the proposition that human beings have inalienable rights from their “Creator,” and not from federal government, was now being utilized to separate religious beliefs from the general public square.

For Jefferson and the other Founders, religious beliefs was central to the whole American task. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are just 2 of many examples where the government acknowledges its financial obligation to God.

As the famously liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas composed in the case of Zorach v. Clausen simply five years after the Everson decision, “We are a spiritual individuals, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”.

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source

The federal government might not develop a nationwide religion, the common practice in Europe. Americans would be free to follow the religion of their option.

When James Madison first proposed what ultimately ended up being the First Amendment, his initial wording was that “no religion shall be established” by Congress. That language was later on modified after it was pointed out that this might be taken to suggest that the government, consisting of the state governments, had no interest in religion at all. Not the Constitution– since there was absolutely nothing in the Constitution to assist them, but to that one expression Thomas Jefferson composed back in 1802.