The BIG Lie: "Separation of Church and State" (Part 15)

Author: Andy Woods
Date Written: May 24, 2014
From the archive of thewordonpolitics.com

In the last fourteen posts, we have presented a series on the "separation between church and state" supposedly found in the First Amendment. It is because of this phrase, which was first introduced into the fabric of our culture through errant Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960’s, that Christianity has generally been purged from public life. ((For the latest documentation on this purging, see Kelly Shackelford, Justin Butterfield, and Bryan Clegg, eds., Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America, 2013 ed. (Plano, TX: Liberty Institute, 2013).)) We noted that we can trace the origin of the modern understanding and application of separation between church and state to the following two Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960’s: Engle v. Vitale ((Engle v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).)) and School District of Abington Township v. Schempp. ((School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).))

Yet, an honest appraisal of these decisions shows them to be out of harmony with the vision of the Constitution’s authors. The purpose of this series of posts has been to demonstrate how out-of-step these decisions are with the express wishes of America’s founding fathers. In conclusion, what the last fourteen posts on this topic have demonstrated is that the introduction and application of the “Separation Between Church and State” doctrine into the fabric of American culture is one of the greatest acts of fraud and deception ever to be perpetrated upon the American people. The doctrine is nothing more than a legal fiction brought into existence only by committing tremendous violence against the founders’ original vision for the country. In its march to separate Christian influence from government, the high court in Engle and Schempp read words into the First Amendment that simply are not there, relied upon and took out of context a letter written by Thomas Jefferson more than a decade after the Constitution was created, ignored the legislative activities of those who authored the First Amendment, applied the First Amendment to the states in spite of the fact that the First Amendment describes itself only as a limitation upon federal power, ignored the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, failed to cite a single precedent, erroneously believed that Christianity causes psychological damage, acted as the Constitution’s amender rather than its interpreter, and selectively applied their newly created separation doctrine only to Judeo-Christian truth while giving alternative non-Christian religions a virtual free pass.

While this criticism may sound strong, it is not mine alone. None other than former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist leveled a similar harsh critique of the “Separation Between Church and State” concept in his dissenting opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree. ((Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 106-7 (1985).)) There, Rehnquist used the following phrases to depict this new doctrine: “the absence of a historical basis for this rigid theory of separation”, “not wholly accurate”, “can only be dimly perceived”, “its lack of historical support”, “all but useless as a guide to sound constitutional application”, “it illustrates all too well Benjamin Cardozo’s observation that ‘metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often in enslaving it’”, “mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights”, “no amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true”, “a metaphor based on bad history”, “a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging”, and “it should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.” Most troubling is that the decision to remove America from its Judeo-Christian heritage did not come through a vote by the American people or even the people’s elected representatives. Rather, it originated from the actions of the unelected, life tenured federal judiciary. Even then, the judiciary was able to render such a ruling only by twisting the Constitution and American history into a pretzel. Perhaps all of this would be easier to stomach if the electorate wanted to remove America from Christianity and re-anchor the nation upon humanism. Yet, the people have never formally consented to such a transition.

Equally troubling is the notion that those voices that are the loudest calling for the Separation Between Church and State are also the loudest for radically expanding the role of government into every area of daily life. Certainly the Obama Administration fits this pattern since it has proposed unprecedented government spending. ((Byron York, “Obama’s Trillions Dwarf Bush’s Dangerous Spending,” online: www.washingtonexaminer.com, accessed 13 October 2009, 1.)) If Christianity has no place in government and government must perpetually expand, then the formula is in place for a country with no Christianity at all. As the government grows, Christianity shrinks. Ann Coulter well summarizes the matter when she says, “First they claim there is no place for religion in the public square, and then they expand the public square to include everything.” ((Ann Coulter, "Foreword," in Speechless: Silencing the Christians, ed. Donald E. Wildmon (Minneapolis, MN: Vigilante, 2009), xiii.))

All of this to say that if the historical error of Separation Between Church and State is not soon corrected, then American Christians may soon find themselves in a country whose national motto is “freedom from religion” rather than “freedom of religion.”

(End of Series)