America, the Secular

This is not a comfortable discussion, but in recent weeks several people have asked me to comment on emails and news items they’ve read concerning that broad topic, “separation of church and state.”

Growing up as I did in Virginia, where one can hardly take a step without bumping into a historical marker or artifact, and growing up Baptist, where it was expected that we understood the First Amendment and its implications quite as thoroughly as we knew each week’s Bible memory verse, I’m always surprised that others don’t seem to know or understand this one basic fact of the American Experience: The United States of America was never, is not now, and—God willing—will never be, a Christian nation.

What we call “the American Experiment” is the fact that the USA was conceived and constituted as the world’s first intentionally secular state, where government and religion might coexist side-by-side, but where they stayed discreetly and absolutely out of each other’s affairs.

If you’ve been down Tampa way in recent weeks, you may have seen the billboards posted around Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, featuring supposed quotes by founding fathers (Washington, Jefferson, etc.) supporting integration (what Baptists call “entanglement”) of church and state. I say “supposed” because some of the quotes were never said by that person. Yet the “Community Issues Council” there seems to say, they would have said it if they’d thought to.

Obviously, the folks at this “issues council” have not bothered to read the Federalist Papers, the correspondence of the Patriots, the records of the Continental Congress, and the debates on toleration vs. liberty which led up to adoption of the Bill of Rights.

Obviously, these folks have never read Article VI of the Constitution which states, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” and they clearly do not understand what “disestablishment” is all about.

The First Patriots had had their fill of church-state intrigues in the “old world.” Many, if not most, who came to these shores came looking—not just for freedom, but—for liberty. And when they finally had it, they were not about to let it go. The “new way” in America meant no state church(es), no clergy paid by tax revenues, no political-religious elite ruling church and congress. The “new way” was a different, secular, way.

Old Ben Franklin is supposed to have said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Whether or not he did, the message is true, if we are to have a free church in a free society, we must learn and teach the truth about our Republic and our Religion. When they asked Jesus about this, he gave his famous answer which was, in essence, “Caesar is not God, and God is not Caesar,” and we need to continue to assert that one must never be confused for the other.