Constitutional Law, Politics, Religion

Ron Paul And The Separation Of Church And State

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) sees a war on religion being waged by the elitist, secular Left. Paul claims the “separation of church and state” is a phrase taken out of context from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. According to Paul, courts have misread and distorted the meaning of the first amendment so that children are banned from praying in school, courthouses are prohibited from displaying the Ten Commandments, and citizens are prevented from praying before football games.

From Paul’s congressional website, he claims that the “separation” doctrine is based upon a phrase taken out of context from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802.” Taking a phrase out of context from a letter containing only five sentences is going to be a tough argument to support. Jefferson wrote:

… 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.

This seems straightforward and self-contained. Jefferson is saying that the establishment and free exercise clauses build a wall of separation. The “taken out of context” argument is not supported. The “taken out of context” argument is simply a dismissive, throw-away line to a devastatingly inconvenient historical fact.

In The War on Religion, Paul writes:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers.

Besides Jefferson, the writings of other founding fathers have expressed similar sentiments regarding the separation of church and state. In Detached Memoranda, James Madison wrote:

Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.

In a letter to Edward Livingston, Madison wrote:

Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

In The War on Religion, Paul continues:

Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.

The number of references to God in the Constitution: zero. Paul must use a different definition of “replete.” The references to “Nature’s God” and “their Creator” in the Declaration of Independence appeal to Deists, Unitarians, as well as Christians.

In The War on Religion, Paul also writes:

Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility.

The moral support of slavery, provided by Southern churches, gives lie to this statement. Churches don’t teach morality, they exist to support their parishioners who, in turn, support the church.

In 1773, Rev. Isaac Backus, a Baptist preacher and leading orator of the American Revolution, advocated for the separation of church and state by saying:

And where these two kinds of government [ecclesiastical and civil], and the weapons which belong to them, are well distinguished. and improved according to the true nature and end of their institution. the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued;

There is a war, but it is not a war on religion, it is a war on the separation of church and state. Those who want to impose religious law, be it sharia or Mosaic, on all citizens must first tear down the wall of separation. They are chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s heritage of separation.

While Glenn Greenwald highlights several admirable Paul policy positions and, while any candidate is a compromise with our own personal policy concepts, the separation of church and state is up near the top of my can’t-compromise list. Religion limits civil liberties for imaginary reasons. The surest way to lose many of our cherished civil liberties is to end the separation of church and state and let religious leaders determine the rules.

H/T: Theocracy Watch.

102 thoughts on “Ron Paul And The Separation Of Church And State”

  2. martin sez, “I can understand that when viewed by a politician, the first amendment may look like a wall. However walls have two sides, and there is no corresponding other side.”

    Politicians got nothing to do with it, slick. It’s all about the law. The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses operate to keep religion out of government and government out of religion. When you seek to promote your religious ideology through the organelles of government, you are seeking to force your religion on someone else who probably isn’t interested in your religion or they’d already practice it – i.e. the 1st Amendment protects other people’s religious practice or lack thereof from people like you using the government to force your religion upon them. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause also protects other people from doing that same thing to you. Wall . . . other side. End of story.

    The only one-sided wall here, martin, is your faulty reasoning seeking to rationalize your theocratic bent. Not only is it faulty reasoning, it violates the laws of physics. Keep your religion out of government and we’ll keep the government out of your religion. Why? Because it’s the law, martin. If you want a theocracy, feel free to move to Iran or Vatican City. Otherwise? You’re stuck with a secular government here by the express terms of the Constitution.

    Deal with it.

  4. anon nurse,
    I hope you are right about a leak. I am not too high on Wyden after his recent cave-in to Rep. Ryan on Medicare.

  5. Old news, but…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27patriot.html

    “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” Mr. Wyden said. He invoked the public’s reaction to the illegal domestic spying that came to light in the mid-1970s, the Iran-contra affair, and the Bush administration’s program of surveillance without warrants.”

    “Another member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, backed Mr. Wyden’s account, saying, “Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law is being carried out.”

    Perhaps there will be a leak. Perhaps it will be a game-changer.

  8. Jill – I had to look and see who was mentioning Andy Worthington. He is going to be in DC in the next few days with No More Guantanamos and the Witness Against Torture group in DC for their trial.

  9. Ken, I refer you to Gene’s response to you just above.

    We can try to explain it to you, but we cannot understand it for you.

  10. I can understand that when viewed by a politician, the first amendment may look like a wall. However walls have two sides, and there is no corresponding other side.

  12. Ken,

    What is “Understanding also requires context”?

    Such as the context that the Due Process Clause and the 14th Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the States, specifically the 1st Amendment, according to Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925). See also, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) and Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940) for cases dealing specifically with the Establishment Clause (Everson) and the Free Exercise Clause (Cantwell).

    As a matter of Constitutional law, you won’t be moving on to Final Jeopardy, Ken.

    I’ll take “Specious Constitutional Reasoning Often Used by Originalists and Libertarians” for $1000, Alex.

  13. This is from Glenn’s column today. It needs to be read in its entirety: “The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

    He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

    Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

    The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist. And there’s a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.

  14. Otteray Scribe,

    Perhaps your understanding of the constitution would be enhanced if you actually read it.

    Meaning doesn’t change because you want it to.

  19. James,

    That’s for politicians to worry about. We the people need to grow a conscience and a spine and stop supporting sock puppets of billionaires.

    We still have one person, one vote in this nation. We should use that and vote for people who reflect our actual values. If a person does not reflect those values, they are not entitled to our vote, our time, our words of support or donations. They should receive nothing except our repudiation of them and everything they stand for. Withdraw consent. Then join with other people who do share your values for social and environmental justice, for the rule of law. Put your time, money and heart there. It’s the best chance we have.

  20. In 2000, I moved to LA and immediately encountered a beast known as Landmark, a codified way of uplifting your inner spirit, written in, like, you know, Angeleno, and was for a time a miraculous and effective method of parting suckers from dollars. As I dug into it, I saw true believers were manning call centers 4 of 5 days a week, from after work until 11pm, calling other Landmarkers and giving them the “Brother so-and-so, when was the last Landmark class you took?” and taking payment information. When confronted, they would claim “the money didn’t matter, it’s the courses, and since you haven’t been to one, you are not in a position to comment.” Descriptions of the “courses” sounded like a cross between tent revivals and office therapy, complete with group humiliation. At least there is music in church.

    This is what our politicians must face for 23.9 hours of their actual days: get on that blasted phone and raise money. The amounts which now must be raised to accommodate the new ceilings doom anyone entering politics into simply manning a call center phone.

    The measure of power becomes how many people you can get to make those calls for you.

    And all of it –every inch of it — is treated as a game by those who play it most.

    If you do not like it, we always have the Credit Score, and failing that, the “T” word.

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