Church and State

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Constantine's Conversion, depicting the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great to Christianity, by Peter Paul Rubens.

Separation of church and state is a political and legal doctrine which states that government and religious institutions are to be kept separate and independent of one another. The term most often refers to the combination of two principles: secularity of government and freedom of religious exercise.

The phrase separation of church and state is generally traced to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists, in which he referred to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as creating a "wall of separation" between church and state. The phrase was then quoted by the United States Supreme Court first in 1878, and then in a series of cases starting in 1947. This led to popular and political discussion of the concept, including criticism that it overstates the limits created under the Constitution.

Although the term is primarily discussed in the context of United States constitutional interpretation, the concept parallels various other international social and political ideas, including secularism, disestablishment, religious liberty, religious pluralism and laicite.

Overview of the principle

In the United States, the "Separation of Church and State" is generally discussed as political and legal principle derived from the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ." The concept of separation is commonly credited to the combination of the two clauses: the establishment clause, generally interpreted as preventing the government from establishing a national religion, providing tax dollars in support of religion, or otherwise favoring any single religion or religion generally, and the free exercise clause, ensuring that private religious practices not be restricted by the government. The effect, of prohibiting direct connections between religious and governmental institutions, while protecting private religious freedom and autonomy, has been termed the "separation of church and state."

There are automatic entanglements between the institutions, inasmuch as religious institutions, and their adherents, are a part of civil society. Moreover, private religious practices can sometimes come into conflict with broad legislation not intending to target any particular religious minority. Each of these complicate the idea of true separation.

Beliefs on the proper relationship between religion and government cover a wide spectrum, from secular government to state atheism to varying degrees of theocracy. Along the line, a number of distinctions and issues are raised. Perhaps the most primary is the division between the two distinct ideas of government secularization and church independence.

History of the term

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Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes: "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."

Another early user of the term was James Madison, the principal drafter of the United States Bill of Rights, who often wrote of "total separation of the church from the state." "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States," Madison wrote, and he declared, "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States." This attitude is further reflected in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, originally authored by Thomas Jefferson, but championed by Madison, and guaranteeing that no one may be compelled to finance any religion or denomination.

... no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

The United States Supreme Court has referenced the separation of church and state metaphor more than 25 times, first in 1878. In the Reynolds case the Court defended marriage as between a man and a woman and denied the free exercise claims of Mormons in the Utah territory. The Court used the metaphor again in 1947 when it was used by Justice Hugo Black in Everson. The term was used and defended heavily by the Court until the early 1970s. Since that time, the Court has distanced itself from the metaphor, often suggesting the metaphor conveys hostility to religion in contrast to Jefferson's original meaning "...in behalf of the rights of [religious] conscience." In Wallace v. Jaffree, Justice Rehnquist presented the view that the establishment clause was intended to protect local establishments of religion from federal interference— a view which diminished the strong separation views of the Court. Justice Scalia has criticized the metaphor as a bulldozer removing religion from American public life.

History of the concept

See Separation of church and state in the United States

As applied in the United States, the idea of separating the church and state is often credited to the writings of the British philosopher John Locke, which deeply influenced the drafting of the United States Constitution. According to his principle of the social contract, Locke had argued that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he argued must therefore remain inviolable by any government authority. These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with Locke's social contract, became influential in the American colonies.

Under the United States Constitution, the treatment of religion by the government is broken into two clauses: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. While both are discussed in the context of the separation of church and state, it is more often discussed in regard to whether certain state actions would amount to an impermissible government establishment of religion.

Nevertheless, issues of free exercise are also implicated by the extent to which laws are permitted to impinge upon private religious practice. In the United States, state laws can prohibit practices such as bigamy, sex with children, human and occasionally animal sacrifice, use of drugs, or other criminal acts, even if citizens claim the practices are part of their religious belief system. However, the federal courts give close scrutiny to any state or local laws that impinge upon the bona fide exercise of religious practices. The courts ensure that genuine and important religious rights are not impeded, and that questionable practices are limited only to the extent necessary. The courts usually demand that any laws restricting religious practices must demonstrate a fundamental or "compelling" state interest, such as protecting citizens from bodily harm.

International Views

Ancient

In most ancient cultures, the political ruler was also the highest religious leader and sometimes considered divine. Under republican government, religious officials were appointed just like political ones. Ancient Israel was different inasmuch as the King and the priesthood were separate and limited to their respective spheres of authority and responsibility, though interferences did happen as well. Later, under foreign supremacy, the high priest also held the highest civil authority in an autonomous theocracy. Biblically, Hezekiah destroyed a copper serpent, calling it Nehushtan, or a lump of brass. From this it was argued that the rulers in Church and State have authority to prohibit, in the public worship of God, the use of things that have been abused to Idolatry.

Roman emperors were considered divine and also occupied the highest religious office. This was challenged by Christians and Jews who acknowledged the Emperor's political authority but refused to participate in the state's religion or to recognize the emperor's divinity. While the Jews were excepted from this demand, Christians were considered enemies of the state and adherence to Christianity was punishable by death (e.g., Justin Martyr under Marcus Aurelius). At various times, this resulted in violent persecutions until the Edict of Milan in 313. The Roman Empire formally became Christian by edict of Theodosius I in 380.

Medieval

See also: Church and state in medieval Europe

In the West, the issue of the separation of church and state during the medieval period centered on monarchs who ruled in the secular sphere but encroached on the Church's rule of the spiritual sphere. This unresolved contradiction in ultimate control of the Church led to power struggles and crises of leadership, notably in the Investiture Controversy, that resulted in a number of important events in the development of the west.

In the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, the Emperor had supreme power over the church and controlled its highest representative, the Patriarch of Constantinople. Eastern Orthodoxy was the state religion. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, the Emperor was killed. The position of head of the Orthodox Church was given to Gennadius II Scholarius by the conquering Caliph and the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Mehmed II, who continued to practice the right of the Roman Emperor to appoint the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Modern

See also: Secularism , Pseudo-secularism , and Secular_humanism

Countries in the modern world have varying degrees of separation between government and religious institutions. While the United States is recognized as the first country to completely disestablish its government from any religion in its Constitution ratified in 1791, a number of other countries have since followed. Nevertheless, the degree of actual separation between government and religion or religious institutions varies widely. In some countries the two institutions remain heavily interconnected. There are new conflicts in the Post communist world.

The many variations on separation can be seen in some countries with high degrees of religious freedom and tolerance combined with strongly secular political cultures which have still maintained state churches or financial ties with certain religious organizations into the 21st century. In England, there is a constitutionally established state religion but are inclusive of other faiths as well. In Norway, similarly, the King is also the leader of the state church, and the 12th article of the Constitution of Norway requires more than half of the members of the Norwegian Council of State to be members of the state church. Yet, the second article guarantees freedom of religion, while also stating that Evangelical Lutheranism is the official state religion. In countries like these, the head of government or head of state or other high-ranking official figures may be legally required to be a member of a given faith. Powers to appoint high-ranking members of the state churches are also often still vested in the worldly governments. These powers may be slightly anachronistic or superficial, however, and disguise the true level of religious freedom the nation possesses.

Two common examples of the most active type of separation are France and Turkey. The French version of separation is called laïcité. This model of a secularist state protects the religious institutions from some types of state interference, but with public religious expression also to some extent limited. This aims to protect the public power from the influences of religious institutions, especially in public office. Religious views which contain no idea of public responsibility, or which consider religious opinion irrelevant to politics, are less impinged upon by this type of secularization of public discourse. Turkey, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim, is also considered to have practiced the laïcité school of secularism since 1923. While France comes from a Roman Catholic tradition and Turkey from an Islamic one, secularism in Turkey and secularism in France present many similarities.

Nevertheless, even France and Turkey present certain entanglements involving funding to certain religious institutions of the kind which has not been permitted in the United States. In Turkey for example, despite it being an officially secular country, the Preamble of the Constitution states that "There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and politics." In order to control the way religion is perceived by adherents, the State pays imams' wages, and provides religious education in public schools. The State has a Department of Religious Affairs, directly under the Prime Minister bureaucratically, responsible for organizing the Muslim religion - including what will and will not be mentioned in sermons given at mosques, especially on Fridays. Such an interpretation of secularism, where religion is under strict control of the State is very different from that of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and is a good example of how secularism can be applied in a variety of ways in different regions of the world.

The opposite end of the spectrum from separation is a theocracy, in which the state is founded upon the institution of religion, and the rule of law is based on the dictates of a religious court. Examples include Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican and Iran. In such countries state affairs are managed by religious authority, or at least by its consent. In theocracies, the degree to which those who are not members of the official religion are to be protected is decided by professors of the official religion, and ordinarily the civil rights, or restrictions of rights of the unfavored group, are defined in terms of the official religion. (See also State religion)

The discussion over the separation of church and state is often connected with the general divide between the concepts of secularism and theocracy. While the term "secularism" was first coined by the British writer George Holyoake in 1846 (more than half a century after the ratification of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and nearly as long after Jefferson's reference to the "Wall of Separation"), it has since come to denote the general concept of separating religion from other aspects of social life, and particularly from the governmental sphere. As such, outside of the United States (where Jefferson's metaphor of the "Wall of Separation" has less importance), and to some extent in the United States as well, the discussion of secularism versus theocracy has come to provide the broader rubrik for discussing the relationship between religion and government.

Enactment

Separation of church and state can occur in different ways. At a basic level, it can occur either on a social level (through individual action, societal expectations, etc., creating such a separation), or through legal separation (official government action or court order aiming to prevent encroachment from one realm into the other). In either circumstance, there are many further interpretations of separation, with numerous arguments in the gray areas between proponents of separation and proponents of mutual inclusion played out in courts and legislatures the world over.

A list of the various types of separation discussed and implemented in various parts of the world could include the following:

• Legal and Financial Separation I: the state should not officially establish a religion.

• Legal and Financial Separation II: the state should not officially fund religious activities.

• Legal and Financial Separation III:the state should not fund religious activities.

• Legal and Financial Separation IV: the state should not fund non-religious activities sponsored by religious organizations.

• Separation of State Authority I: the state should not prescribe, proscribe, or amend religious beliefs.

• Separation of State Authority II: the state should not attempt to endorse or criticize any religious belief or practice.

• Separation of State Authority III: the state should not interfere in religious hierarchies, nor interfere in issues strictly related to membership.

• Separation of State Authority IV: No state action should have the primary effect of engaging in religious practice. Any such appearance of a state religious practice must be unintentional and coincidental.

• Separation of State Authority V: No state action should have the primary effect of restricting religious practice. Any such appearance of interference in religious practice must be unintentional and coincidental.

• Separation of State Authority VI: the state should not express any religious beliefs, or in any publication, speech, or other implement of state power such as currency, sworn testimony, oath of fealty to the state, or endorsements of national pride. The state should not imply any derivation of authority from any religious authority, nor should it express temporal supremacy in relation to religious belief or practice.

• Separation of State Authority VII: political leaders should not express religious preferences in the course of their duties

• Separation of Religious Authority I: no church should prescribe, proscribe, or amend civil or common law.

• Separation of Religious Authority II: the church should not interfere in civil political processes or relations between the state and other nations.

• Separation of Religious Authority III: no church should actively endorse any political figure, and should confine itself to moral, ethical, and religious teaching.

• Separation of Religious Authority IV: no church should actively endorse any civil institution by providing religious services or religious expressions at that institution, nor favor one civil institution over another.

For instance, France is legally prohibited from funding religious activities (except for Alsace-Moselle, French Guiana and military chaplains), but funds some private religious schools for their non-religious activities as long as they apply the national curriculum and do not discriminate on grounds of religion.

Advocacy

Roman Catholic views

On December 8, 1864, on the same day as the Pope's encyclical Quanta Cura, the Holy See under Pope Pius IX issued a document titled Syllabus of Errors (Latin: Syllabus Errorum). This document listed 80 specific assertions which it declared to be erroneous. Assertion number 55 in this list, in the section headed "Errors about civil society, considered both in itself and in its relation to the Church," reads: "The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church."

The Catholic Church's 1983 Code of Canon law, while not laying down general rules about relations between Church and State, considers that a religious and moral education in harmony with the conscience of the pupils' parents is an integral part of education, and obliges Catholics to try to secure its inclusion: "Christ's faithful are to strive to secure that in the civil society the laws which regulate the formation of the young also provide a religious and moral education in the schools that is in accord with the conscience of the parents" (canon 799)

American Catholics, some suffering discrimination from mainstream, majority Protestants, eventually came to see the separation of church and state as a positive development (in contrast to the long standing Church tradition). The work of Jesuit priest and theologian John Courtney Murray in the 1960s was significant as he developed a theological justification of the separation view based upon St. Thomas Aquinas' observation that there existed a necessary distinction between morality and civil law; that the latter is limited in its capacity in cultivating moral character through criminal prohibitions. As Murray said, "it is not the function of civil law to prescribe everything that is morally right and to forbid everything that is morally wrong."

Baptist views

Historically, Baptists have supported separation of church and state. In particular, many radical Anabaptist movements, sensitised by the persecution they suffered under both Protestant and Catholic authorities, held that the state should not interfere in religious affairs and vice-versa. One of the earliest calls for separation came from Thomas Helwys, the founder of the first Baptist Church in England. In his last written work, A Short Declaration on the Mystery of Iniquity, he penned a note inside the cover of a single copy that was intended for King James. Whether the King received it or not is disputed, but Helwys was later arrested and placed in Newgate Prison. The words that got him in trouble were as follows (spelling is updated to modern conventions):

Hear, O king, and despise not the counsel of the poor, and let their complaints come before thee. The king is a mortal man and not God, therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them, and to set spiritual lords over them. If the king has authority to make spiritual lords and laws, then he is an immortal God and not a mortal man. O king, be not seduced by deceivers to sin against God whom you ought to obey, nor against your poor subjects who ought and will obey you in all things with body, life and goods, or else let their lives be taken from the earth. God save the king. Tho. Helwys. Spittalfield near London.

Another formal plea for separation of church and state in England, called Religious Peace: or, a Plea for Liberty of Conscience. was written to King James by a London citizen named Leonard Busher, a man later identified as an Anabaptist. In 1868, the renowned Baptist pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon perhaps best summed up the separationist Baptist stand thusly:

Which shall we wonder at most, the endurance of the faithful or the cruelty of their tormentors? Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.

In more recent years, the foremost Baptist witness in the United States for the protection of separation of church and state has been the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. An education and advocacy group in Washington, D.C., the Baptist Joint Committee is affiliated with fourteen Baptist bodies collectively representing over 10 million Baptists in the United States.

Other Christian views

Since the 5th century, the Coptic Church has advocated separation of church and state. Most Unitarian Universalists advocate separation of church and state.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long held to the doctrine of separation of church and state originating in part from the long antagonism local and state governments have had towards their faith. Mormon writings have affirmed "[n]o domination of the state by the church; No church interference with the functions of the state; No state interference with the functions of the church, or with the free exercise of religion; The absolute freedom of the individual from the domination of ecclesiastical authority in political affairs; The equality of all churches before the law."

However some Christian groups, such as the Christian Voice and the Christian Coalition, oppose church and state separation and have become highly and vocally involved in promoting what they believe to be Christian values in government. The Reformed Presbyterian Church, a Calvinistic denomination, also believes that the state constitutionally covenants to follow God's laws on earth. (This does not, however, involve a structural unification of church and state.)

Islamic views

Islam holds that political life can only function properly within the context of Islamic law, and since God's law is universally true and beneficial to all people, any state law or action contrary to God's law would be harmful to the citizens, and displeasing to God. Many Muslims consider the Western concept of separation of Church and State to be rebellion against God's law. There is a contemporary debate in Islam whether obedience to Islamic law is ultimately compatible with the Western secular pattern, which separates religion from civic life. However, some majority Muslim nations are secular, such as Turkey, Senegal, and Albania.

Other religious views

Religious opponents of secular government hold that while the state should not establish a particular state religion or require religious observance, it still must be infused with religious ethics and values in order to operate "properly," and needs to encourage ethical and beneficial religious belief, both inside and outside of government. These persons argue that the teachings of religion are the basis of law and civil society and that a society which discourages the promulgation of those beliefs cannot function. Furthermore, these groups argue that religious groups ought to be involved in politics in order to assure that laws are passed which reflect what they perceive as universal truths.

Other religious persons argue that the State ought to maintain an established church.

Another view is that the state should provide a default religion for the large number of citizens who wish to identify themselves as religious believers without actively choosing between the various alternatives. A slightly more extreme version of this is that the state should determine (or at least have the power to determine) the doctrine and structure of the state religion - this is the position in England, and has links to ideas underlying Erastianism. However, there need not be obligation on individuals to follow the state in religion in such cases.

Secular views

Some people desire the legal separation of church and state in order to keep a religion from enforcing its social or ethical paradigm on the government. For example, many atheists, agnostics and freethinkers believe it inappropriate for government to be controlled by a religion.^{[citation needed]}

See also

American

Historical

• William Bradford (1590-1657), Plymouth Colony
• Roger Williams (theologian), Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
• William Penn, Province of Pennsylvania (inc. Delaware Colony)

Contemporary

• Americans United for Separation of Church and State
• Freedom From Religion Foundation (Freethought)
• American Civil Liberties Union
• North American Religious Liberty Association
• People for the American Way
• Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council

General

• Laïcité
• State religion
• Antidisestablishmentarianism
• Freedom of religion
• Status of religious freedom by country
• Religious toleration
• Christian anarchism
• Christian Reconstructionism
• Islamic leadership
• Ayatollah Mohamed Hossein Kazemini Borujerdi
• Dogma
• Enlightenment
• Intellectualism

External links

International Separation of church and state

• International Religious Freedom Report 2006. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2006-10-08.
• Hogan, Michael, Ph.D. (2001-05-16). Q:Which other governments have separation of church and state issues?. Australian review of Public Affairs, quoted by www.procon.com. Retrieved 2006-11-30.

Europe

• http://en.calvinism.ru - articles against separation of church and state and against feminism. Theocratic Calvinism, theocracy, theonomy, Biblical law solves problems of western nations, applied reformed theology website located in Russia. English and Russian sections

• Human-Etisk Forbund (Norway)
• Religious Liberty: The legal framework in selected OSCE countries.. Law Library, U.S. Library of Congress (May 2000). Retrieved 2007-04-06.

American activism in favor of strict separation

• Americans United for Separation of Church and State
• Scholars in favor, with historical documents on-line
• Freedom from Religion Foundation (Freethought)
• American Civil Liberties Union
• North American Religious Liberty Association
• People for the American Way
• Interfaith Working Group
• American Jewish Committee (Jewish)
• Anti-Defamation League (Jewish)
• Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs
• Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council

American activism against strict separation

• American Center for Law and Justice
• WallBuilders
• The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
• The Rutherford Institute
• The Institute on Religion and Public Life
• Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

Origins of the phrase

• The Federalist Papers
• History of the Separation of Church and State in America
• PDF by Noah Feldman, Asst. Professor of Law, New York University, 2002.

Islamic activism in favor of separation

• Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS)
• International Coalition Against Political Islam
• No to Political Islam

Religion and politics

• The Privatization of God
• God in Government

References

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