Is it just me, or will people swallow anything when it comes to patriotism?
With July 4th right around the corner, this is a prime opportunity to review a couple of recent court decisions and dispel some common myths where "the separation of church and state" is concerned. Let's start with that phrase itself; the way the Religious Right attacks it is symptomatic of the overall flaw in their approach. Whenever the subject of Separation is brought up, someone will inevitably point out that the phrase "separation of church and state" appears nowhere in the Constitution. This is completely true, but it misses the point. The phrase actually comes from one of Thomas Jefferson's letters, in which he discusses the intent behind and effect of the First Amendment. You see, people can argue about the exact meaning behind "no law regarding an establishment of religion" all day long; that's a pretty awkward phrase, if you think about it. Jefferson's letter (ironically enough, to a group of Baptists who feared the establishment of a national religion) gets quoted so often precisely because it illustrates exactly what the Founding Fathers meant by that phrase.
This brings me to the myth that all (or at least most) of our Founding Fathers were devout Christians and built this country on the Christian religion; both parts of this are completely false. First of all, there are several indications that the nation was not founded upon Christianity; the First Amendment is but one of them. Another is the blunt statement in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli (drafted under Washington, signed by Adams) that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." Of course, you never hear about that, because it's very inconvenient for the Religious Right. As to the other statement, Jefferson was such a devout Christian that he made his own version of the Bible...without the miracles, because he didn't believe in them. Most of the Founding Fathers were Deists, meaning that they believed in a god who created the universe, set it in motion, and then backed off. Christianity is completely incompatible with that belief, for obvious reasons. This predominant Deism is why you see phrases like "Nature's God" and "our Creator," instead of "Jesus" or "Jehovah." Remember, these were well-educated people who were products of the Enlightenment; even the Christians among them were by no stretch of the imagination comparable to today's fundamentalists.
As I write this, it has been about a week since the 9th Circuit Court declared the addition of the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional. I've read the full text of the decision - footnotes and all - and despite all the outrage, the decision is correct. The court applied each of the three tests that are in current use (Lemon, establishment, and coercion), and the 1954 act which added "under God" to the Pledge flunks all three of them. Legally, the decision is ironclad. Of course, this is not to say that it won't be overturned; I merely mean that if it is overturned, it will be because of the outrage, rather than for objective legal reasons.
Critics of the decision have pointed to a lot of things when finding fault with the ruling, but their arguments are faulty at best. For instance, some wail that "In God We Trust" on the money will be next. Well, it ought to be - it was put on there by stealth in the first place. The story's actually an entertaining one. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed James Pollock - former governor of Pennsylvania and member of the anti-separationist National Reform Association - as Director of the Mint. Later that year, a Baptist pastor wrote the Secretary of the Treasury, one Salmon P. Chase, to complain about the lack of religious content in our coinage. Chase wrote to Pollock to pass along this complaint and voice his support, and Pollock got to work. In 1864, Congress delegated the power to design money to "the director of the mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury" - and the fix was in. In 1908, Congress froze that motto into place on the coins, after it became known that the sculptor who was preparing new designs for coinage disapproved of the motto for aesthetic reasons. Incidentally, Teddy Roosevelt - who was behind the redesign - disapproved of the motto for religious reasons; he felt such a common use of the motto to be sacrilege. Naturally, at the height of the Cold War, the paper money followed suit in 1957. (I carry a 1953 five-dollar bill, on which IGWT is conspicuous by its absence.) It's a classic example of religious people being given an inch and taking a mile; for each further encroachment, they used the previous example as precedent.
One of the other objections - as well as something brought up in assorted Ten Commandments cases - is that the Commandments are engraved on the Supreme Court building. Well, like so many of the Religious Right's claims, this is only true as far as it goes. See, what they don't tell you is that the text of the Commandments does not appear anywhere in that building. The most prominent appearance is a big mural-style depiction of various legal moments throughout history, which features Moses (holding blank tablets) along with seventeen other historical lawgivers. There's a very thorough page dealing with this claim on a Tripod Separation of Church and State Home Page, and I recommend it highly.
You see, this history is exactly why separationists fight every incursion by those who would mingle church and state. In the past, whenever we haven't fought, that instance gets used as justification for more intrusion. IGWT on coins led to "under God" in the Pledge and IGWT on the money, and those in turn are used to justify the Ten Commandments in courthouses. In perhaps the most appalling case, our respectful silence during all the state-sponsored religious activity following the World Trade Center attack is now being used as ammunition to justify yet more intrusion. The anti-separationists are like pushy telemarketers; you have to be rude to get away from them, because they play on your sense of decency without reciprocating it. Sure, "under God" in the Pledge is a small thing, and a decent person can overlook it. Yeah, IGWT on the money is a small thing - but these small things add up to precedents which cannot be ignored or overlooked. This is why the notion of a "moment of silence" at the beginning of the school day gets opposed; whenever it has been enacted, it quickly leads to either a teacher-led prayer or directions that "it's time to pray now." The anti-separationists would have you believe that separationists are being unreasonable in going after every hole in the wall of separation, but the truth is that unless the holes are plugged, they just get bigger. In short, if they weren't so dead-set on tearing down the wall, we wouldn't have to be so unreasonable in defending it. It's kind of like the teenager who keeps trying to buy beer until the clerk resorts to calling the cops; if the teenager had simply acknowledged the mistake and gone away, the situation wouldn't have escalated to the point that the police needed to get involved. "Don't start none and there won't be none," if you will. As much as the anti-separationists love playing the martyr, they're the ones on the offensive. The separationists are just trying to prevent further damage and - once in a while - repair some of the damage that's already been done.
One type of doublespeak would be particularly funny if not done in complete seriousness. In his commentary published on June 30, 2002, John Leo refers to "under God" as both "a crucial symbol, the last religious reference left in the schools" and "a vague expression of 'ceremonial deism' or even a content-free catchphrase." He can't have it both ways; either the phrase is a crucial religious symbol or it is a meaningless expression. If the former, then it most certainly does not belong in the Pledge; if the latter, then it serves no purpose there. Either way, the phrase should be dropped. This is reminiscent of Hamilton County commissioner Bill Hullander arguing on one hand that the Ten Commandments were posted as a completely secular act, then turning around and praising the effect that posting "God's Word" in the courthouse allegedly had on the crime rate. All this doubletalk means is that the speaker is trying to affirm the religious content while denying that it's significant enough to violate the First Amendment. All I can say in response is that if these things are so insignificant, why do people get so upset about the attempts to do away with them? Doesn't make sense, does it?
Incidentally, I must say something about the reaction I've seen to the local Ten Commandments ruling that perhaps illustrates the exact misconception that's at work. Someone wrote in to the local newspaper with the idea that if we couldn't have the Commandments in the courthouse, we should raise money and post 'em on a big billboard or three...to which I say, go for it. A billboard is a private space, paid for with private money. There is no First Amendment problem whatsoever with that approach. That this person even thought there might be a problem with that speaks volumes about his lack of understanding of the principles at work. See, despite those who claim that separationists are hostile to all expressions of religion, most of us just like to keep our religion and our government apart. One might as well claim that since I prefer to eat banana pudding after my steak instead of slathered on top of it, I must have something against banana pudding. That's far from true; I simply don't like it mixed with the main course. So it is with religion; I have no problem with you believing whatever you want to believe, so long as you don't try to shove it down my throat. Hell, offer it up nicely and I might dig in - but if coercion is your only tool, you'll never know.
This is perhaps the biggest myth propagated by anti-separationists: that all separationists are people who hate religion. Granted, some of them are. Several people on a separationist email list which I participate in are for a state income tax simply because some anti-separationists are against it. (This particular group, commonly called Dominionists, believes that by stripping government to the bone, Christianity will gain power. I believe them to be incorrect in that conclusion, at least to the degree they take it, but I'm perfectly willing to accept their help in shrinking government.) However, most separationists are religious to some degree. While non-Christians are more likely to be separationists out of simple self-preservation, there are quite a few Christians in there as well. Perhaps they've read the passage in Matthew where Jesus tells his followers to pray in secret, and concluded from this that school prayer is bad. Maybe they remember the bit about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and they figure that's a prime endorsement of the separationist principle of the First Amendment. Then again, maybe they just don't want their religion in the hands of Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank. There are any number of valid reasons for a Christian to be a separationist, and hostility to religion is only one of them..
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish my Fourth of July preparations....