You are viewing an archived page on our old website. Click here to visit our new website.

Home | Join/Donate | Current Voices | Liturgical Calendar | What's New | Affirmation | James Hitchcock's Column | Church Documents | Search


The Myth of the "Wall of Separation" 

by James Hitchcock
January 5, 2005

"WHEN the Founding Fathers of the United States drafted the Constitution, they built a 'wall of separation of church and state' to keep religion from intruding into the public sphere. This has been the American tradition ever since. Unfortunately the 'Religious Right' now seeks to breach that wall and thereby undermine the Constitution."

The above view of our history is now common in public discourse, particularly beloved of some editorial writers, who lecture a backward citizenry about the true "American way." In fact, however, no matter how often the above mantra is repeated, virtually every part of it is untrue.

When the framers of the Constitution adopted the clause "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" they did not explain what they meant by it. There was almost no discussion of it at the time, in all likelihood because no one saw a need to clarify its meaning, because it was merely intended to prevent the Federal government from interfering with the various states in matters of religion, at a time when some states still maintained official churches.

Modern separationists invoke the names of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to "prove" what the Founding Fathers intended. But Jefferson had nothing to do with the drafting of the Bill of Rights. Madison did, but the Religion Clauses were the work of someone else. The hallowed phrase "wall of separation" does not appear in the Constitution, as some people seem to think, but in a private letter that Jefferson wrote some years later. For almost a century afterwards the "wall" metaphor was largely ignored.

Those who believe the myth of strict separationism find it impossible to explain why we have military chaplains, prayers in courts and legislatures, the claim "In God We Trust" on coins, an official Thanksgiving day, oaths that end "so help me, God," and many other things that bring religion into the public sphere. The answer is simple -- even Madison and Jefferson were not as extreme as the modern separationists and, for more than 150 years after the Bill of Rights was drafted, few people agreed with Madison's and Jefferson's separationist philosophy. Even those two statesmen, while they were in office, accommodated religion in various ways, and it is quite clear that few of their contemporaries understood the First Amendment in the ways Madison and Jefferson wanted it understood.

Thus, not surprisingly, until 1948 the Supreme Court never found a violation of separation of church and state, and on numerous occasions it upheld arrangements whereby religion received official public support. As late as 1930 the Court dismissed out of hand a claim that it was unconstitutional for a state to provide textbooks to students in Catholic schools, just as it had previously ruled that no institution was "sectarian" if it provided beneficial services to society, like schools or hospitals.

The Court in 1947-8 made a revolution simply by bold assertion, without regard for historical or judicial evidence, like a magician turning a bouquet of flowers into a pigeon in full view of an audience. Some of the leading constitutional scholars pointed this out at the time, but the new understanding of the First Amendment quickly became enshrined as definitive, and ever since separationists have reacted with shock and horror when anyone recalls how arbitrary these decisions really were.

How and why this happened in 1947-8 is a complicated story, but a key part of it is the fact that most of the Supreme Court justices who brought about this revolution, and many of the people who then enshrined it in our national, lore, frankly regarded traditional religion as outmoded and in some ways dangerous. They did not really care what the Founding Fathers intended, or what the real tradition of the country was. They simply believed that the time had come to marginalize religion. Those who today seek to undo some of the damage stemming from that fallacy are not undermining the Constitution but seeking to recover it.

To learn more about this than most readers probably want to know, see my recent book The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life (Princeton University Press - two volumes (see link below).


James Hitchcock, professor of history at St. Louis University, writes and lectures on contemporary Church matters. His column appears in the diocesan press. Dr. Hitchcock's two volume work, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life, Vol. 1 The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses and Vol. II From 'Higher Law' to 'Sectarian Scruples', was released by Princeton University Press September 2, 2004.

E-Mail: Dr. James Hitchcock


**Women for Faith & Family operates solely on your generous donations!

WFF is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donations are tax deductible.


Columns copyright © 1995 - 2005 by James Hitchcock. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted without permission. (Permission is granted to download articles for personal use only.)

Voices copyright © 1999-Present Women for Faith & Family. All rights reserved.

PERMISSION GUIDELINES

All material on this web site is copyrighted and may not be copied or reproduced without prior written permission from Women for Faith & Family,except as specified below.

Personal use
Permission is granted to download and/or print out articles for personal use only.

Quotations
Brief quotations (ca 500 words) may be made from the material on this site, in accordance with the “fair use” provisions of copyright law, without prior permission. For these quotations proper attribution must be made of author and WFF + URL (i.e., “Women for Faith & Family – www.wf-f.org.)

Attribution
Generally, all signed articles or graphics must also have the permission of the author. If a text does not have an author byline, Women for Faith & Family should be listed as the author. For example: Women for Faith & Family (St Louis: Women for Faith & Family, 2005 + URL)

Link to Women for Faith & Family web site.
Other web sites are welcome to establish links to www.wf-f.org or to individual pages within our site.


Back to top -- Home -- Back to James Hitchcock Column Index
Women for Faith & Family
PO Box 300411
St. Louis, MO 63130

314-863-8385 Phone -- 314-863-5858 Fax -- Email

You are viewing an archived page on our old website. Click here to visit our new website.