Separation of Church and State Is Not Just for Liberals . . .

Barry Hankins November/December 1999 Parker has been billed as a converted and reformed welfare mother who has become a fiery orator for conservative Christian political causes. Given her newness to the political fray, perhaps she could be forgiven for not knowing the history of church state separation and the value inherent in this arrangement for protecting the liberty of all religious groups, including those in the Christian Right. But how could one explain the presence of the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus on that same program with Parker? Neuhaus is a highly intelligent and educated Catholic priest, author of several important books, and editor of First Things, a journal offering significant cultural commentary. Surely he cannot despise the separation of church and state the same way that Parker appears to. Perhaps not, given that he was quoted as saying merely that the separation of church and state has been "grotesquely distorted." However arguable this comment, it is quite different from the outright rejection of the principle of separation touted by many Christian political activists these days.[2]

While there have always been individuals and groups who reject the concept of separation of church and state, the mainstreaming of this view is a new phenomenon. As recently as the early 1980s Jerry Falwell insisted repeatedly that he believed in the separation of church and state.[3] Such a profession was necessary if he and his Moral Majority were going to participate fully in American politics. Yes, his critics may have questioned his understanding of church-state issues, given that his views were so different from theirs, but whatever he meant by the phrase "separation of church and state," he evidently felt compelled to use it. Falwell's situation was akin to that of the 1950s and 1960s when left-wing political activists found it necessary to say that they really were good Democrats and not \communists. In other words, separation of church and state was akin to mom, baseball, and apple pie--so thoroughly American that even those seeking significant changes in church-state law started by professing their allegiance to the ideal.

As that Christian Coalition rally illustrates, we have come a long way since the 1980s. Now many conservative Christian activists of both Protestant and Catholic persuasions routinely reject the separation of church and state, often using very strong language to do so. W. A. Criswell, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, may have been one of the earliest to pioneer this transformation from pro- to antiseparation. He supported separation in the early sixties, especially when a Catholic was running for the presidency. Then in the mid-eighties he told CBS News, "I believe this notion of the separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel's imagination."[4]

Pat Robertson has gone even further, stating repeatedly from the 1980s on that since the words "separation of church and state" are not in the U.S. Constitution, but were in the constitution of the Soviet Union, church-state separation was obviously an atheistic, Communist idea.[5]

Conversely, after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., conservative Presbyterian pastor and Christian Right spokesperson D. James Kennedy claimed that Russia had gained complete religious liberty while the United States had lost it. He attributed this perceived decline in religious liberty in America to the separation of church and state, turning on its head the standard historical and constitutional argument that religious liberty and separation of church and state are mutually dependent.[6]

Close observers of this phenomenon will know that arguably the most prolific and effective proponent of the antiseparationist view is David Barton, the former math teacher and high school principal who founded Wall Builders, headquartered in Aledo, Texas. Barton barnstorms the country with high tech slide-show presentations purporting to prove that the founders intended to establish a nation that gave preference to Christianity. He has written the aptly titled The Myth of Separation. In all his books, tapes, and public addresses, Barton relies heavily on selected quotations from America's founders. Recently Robert Alley, professor emeritus at Richmond University and an expert on James Madison, questioned a Barton quote attributed to Madison. When Alley's research revealed that Madison had probably never uttered the remark in question, Barton retracted it. In an astounding move, Barton also issued a published retraction of 11 other quotes, listing 10 as questionable and two, including the Madison quote, as false.[7] However, the flap does not seem to have slowed Barton's juggernaut.

The ultimate sign of the mainstreaming of this rejection of separation of church and state, or at least of the proverbial "wall of separation," came in the Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) Supreme Court decision. With the majority overturning Alabama's "moment of silence" legislation for public schools, associate justice William Rehnquist wrote in dissent, "The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."[8] Given that Rehnquist is now chief justice, those who reject separation clearly have an ally in one of the highest offices in the American political system.

All these spokespersons, and many others as well, share in common a deep suspicion of separation of church and state. There is developing a fairly standard belief that separation is only for those who are comfortable with secular liberalism. Those ascribing to this position seem to believe that people of faith should pursue some other constitutional arrangement. This suspicion is somewhat understandable given that separation of church and state is so often articulated and defended in the individualist language of the secular Enlightenment. The entire rights argument in America, as articulated by the left, usually begins with reference to the autonomous individual and his or her rights of conscience.

For most of American history, evangelicals from Anabaptist, holiness, and even some Calvinist backgrounds have accepted a tacit and limited alliance with the Enlightenment on the issue of religious liberty. Lately, however, the cost of this alliance has appeared to be too high. For many evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, the phrase "individual rights" now stands for an excessive individualism, where people are free from all constraints and may believe anything they want and do anything they want so long as it does not hurt anyone else. For many traditional believers "secular humanism" or just "liberal" are used as pejorative catch-all words for this worldview. The resulting belief is that, therefore, separation of church and state is for liberals only.

Separation of church and state, however, does not need to be defended in this way. The secular Enlightenment articulation was neither the first nor the only way of defending separation, and there is some real doubt as to whether it is the best defense, especially for Christians. Following are two brief examples of Christian defenses of separation of church and state. Neither finds its genesis in the concept of individual rights. Rather, both cohere around the idea that God has ordained the church and the state for different functions.

At this juncture most Christian arguments for separation usually turn to Roger Williams. Having lived prior to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, he obviously could not have been influenced by that movement. But rather than relying on this familiar and very worthy religious liberty advocate, we might be better off to analyze briefly John Locke, the figure most closely associated with the Enlightenment. Locke is often considered the "father of the Enlightenment" or the "apostle of reason," but recently scholars are reemphasizing the religious side to Locke's thinking that seems to have been downgraded, if not forgotten. Evangelical Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it this way: "Our common practice of treating the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophers as if they were secular philosophers does most of them a very ill turn."[9] Whatever the implications of Locke's thought for the development of secular ways of thinking, and there certainly are some, his own views cannot be separated from his deep commitment to a Christian faith that, as Locke scholar Samuel Pearson puts it, "rested on historic revelation."[10] Even John Wesley recommended Locke for study, something highly unlikely unless Wesley had a fair degree of confidence in Locke's theological orthodoxy and Christian commitment.[11]

What concerns us here is Locke's argument for religious toleration and separation of church and state, made in his famous Letter Concerning Toleration. While he certainly makes an appeal to reason in this brief pamphlet, he does not draw exclusively or even primarily on individual rights. Rather, he analyzes institutions, arguing that the Bible neither gives the power of the sword to the church nor the power over religious faith to the state.

Locke posed a hypothetical situation in which there are two churches in the Ottoman Turkish Empire, one Calvinist and one Arminian, each claiming that it is right. Which one should have the authority to impose its theology and deny rights to the other? Someone might well say "the orthodox one," but this will not do, writes Locke, because every church is orthodox unto itself. Should the state decide which church is correct? Obviously this would be impossible, since the Ottoman ruler was Muslim, known as the "infidel" in Locke's day. How could a Muslim be competent to evaluate Christian theology? But it would not matter if the ruler were Christian, Locke argued, because governments are always incompetent to judge religion. God did not give them that prerogative, and they do not possess the necessary expertise. A government leader may be a Christian, but as an official of the state he or she has not been bestowed by God with power over faith.[12]

Locke also turned this argument around. Not only is the state without authority to settle theological disputes; churches cannot receive more power than they already have by aligning with the government. The church's authority comes from God and cannot be augmented by the state. Whether the ruler be Christian or non-Christian makes no difference. The ruler simply does not possess the God-given right to convey authority or power onto the church. In this respect, Locke points out that churches tend to be tolerant until they get the power of government at their backs, then "peace and charity" are laid aside and the churches tend to engage in un-Christian practices.[13] Although Locke does not say it outright, the implication is that when the church seeks support from the state, whether financial or otherwise, it stoops to an illegitimate source of authority and thereby hurts itself spiritually. For Locke, the entire church-state question was as much a theological matter having to do with God's created order for earthly institutions as it was an issue of the right of individuals to be left free to do as they please. God had created the state to do some things and the churches to do others. "He jumbles Heaven and Earth together," wrote Locke, "who mixes these two societies."[14]

It is widely acknowledged that the churches of Europe that do draw support from the state have done very poorly in the past few centuries. Church attendance is extremely low by comparison to the United States, and there is widespread sentiment that these churches are part of an elite established order that has nothing to offer common people. In other words, the same sort of antiestablishment sentiment exhibited by Americans toward government is exerted by Europeans against both government and the established churches. In addition to this historical-cultural argument, Christians may want to consider another possibility. Suppose that the churches of Europe have also suffered because in relying on the state's power, they have largely forfeited the power of the Holy Spirit. Of course, this could never be documented conclusively through the normal methods of historical investigation, and I include this suggestion here merely as something worth pondering. Nevertheless, the argument seems at the least reasonable. Moreover, given Locke's concern that church and state abide by biblically established precepts, it may not be going too far to suggest that this spiritual interpretation for the decline of modern European churches is consistent with his belief that churches cannot be empowered by government. If the authority and power of churches could be augmented by the state, European state churches would be authoritative and powerful today. In fact, they are neither.

Someone may well point out that Locke would certainly not be considered an evangelical today, that he was at best ambivalent on the doctrine of the trinity and too insistent that religion had to be reasonable. But more important to the issue, he was principally concerned that churches and states do what God intended them to do, and this seems a view that traditional believers in the twentieth century can share.

One in particular who did share Locke's concern for the church was the evangelical J. Gresham Machen. Machen was the most erudite defender of conservative Protestant orthodoxy on the fundamentalist side of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy within American religious institutions during the first quarter or so of this century. For his conservative stand he was forced out of Princeton Seminary, whereupon he founded Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and eventually the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, both of which stand to this day as small but significant bulwarks of conservative, confessional evangelicalism.

Embedded in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy was the question of the relationship of the church to culture. The liberals (then known as modernists) believed that the church should be broad enough to encompass all of American culture. When intellectual currents changed as a result of evolutionary thought and modern biblical criticism, they attempted to adjust Protestant theology in order to keep it relevant to society. They desired to continue the sort of Protestant cultural dominance that had existed in the nineteenth century, and to do this they conceived of Christianity as an inclusive religion. Machen countered in 1923 with his most famous book Christianity and Liberalism, in which he argued that the liberals had adjusted Christianity so much that they had essentially created another religion. So compelling was this work that secular commentators such as H. L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann wrote that Machen had the better argument.[15]

Machen believed that Christianity was narrow and exclusive, that it had particular teachings that should be defended. He was most concerned that the Presbyterian Church retain its historical integrity by remaining true to the Bible and to the creeds on which it was founded. The church's mission was not to embrace and encompass American culture but to defend Christian orthodoxy and usher people into a right relationship with God. To do this, the church needed to be as free from cultural influences as was possible, and this is where Machen's church-state views came into play. Although a fundamentalist in his own time, Machen opposed prayer, Bible reading, and character education in public schools, and he did not oppose the teaching of evolution. Such attempts to moralize and Christianize the social order, believed Machen, required that believers find the lowest common denominator in religion. Simply put, he was not interested in lowest common denominators but rather sought to defend the principles of the Christian faith that made it unique. He knew that to the extent that Christians joined the effort to embrace culture, even in an effort to Christianize it, they would likely dilute their faith. As Machen biographer Darrell Hart puts it: "The admixture of public and religious interests was objectionable to Machen not just because it threatened the free exercise of religion but also because it corrupted belief itself."[16]

As startling as it is that a fundamentalist such as Machen would support separation of church and state, it is even more surprising that he would do this as an orthodox Calvinist pledged to the Westminster Confession. The John Calvin of popular thought and survey history textbooks is remembered for the attempt to fuse church and state in the city of Geneva and for the burning of the arch-heretic Michael Servetus. However lacking in nuance and subtlety, this caricature does at least point out aptly that Calvin was no separationist. He did, however, believe strongly in the independence of the church. In Geneva the church had tremendous influence over what the state did, but the state could not interfere in the workings of the church. Calvin insisted on this and fought a decade-long battle against an opposition party that wanted the state to have the authority to require churches to excommunicate heretics. What Machen seems to have recognized is how much the cultural situation had changed since Calvin's day. When nearly everyone in town was a Calvinist Protestant, the church could embrace the society without losing its Calvinist character. When the scene shifted to a pluralistic twentieth-century America, however, the church would have to broaden itself considerably in order to encompass its culture. Machen recognized that in order to maintain the church's autonomy and integrity, efforts to Christianize the whole society would have be jettisoned. He was comfortable with pluralism, therefore, because this allowed the church to take its proper place in society. As merely one institution in a pluralistic culture, it was freed from the responsibility of having to speak for many and could instead concentrate on being the pure and prophetic voice of the one true God. A Protestantism broad enough to include the great majority of Americans required that the church forfeit its exclusive nature and its unique call.

Although Machen was the most important scholar of evangelicalism in his own time, his position seems lost on many of the late twentieth-century heirs of early fundamentalism. In the wake of the Religious Right of the 1980s and the Christian Right of the nineties, many often quite naturally associate evangelical politics with the desire to have organized prayer and Bible reading in public schools, tuition tax credits and vouchers for private Christian schools, and many other forms of governmental support for religion. The desire for the state to accommodate the churches in this way will undoubtedly require that the churches in turn accommodate the culture. The inherent danger is that the churches will become fine social institutions with theological ideas and religious practices broad enough to include practically anyone. As such, they will have lost their distinctive character and their prophetic edge.

Those present at the 1996 Christian Coalition Road to Victory Conference apparently believed that one of the most important first steps toward re Christianizing American culture is to end the separation of church and state. They evidently believed no harm will come to the churches if their efforts succeed. If Machen was correct, however, it is unlikely that a church can dominate culture and remain truly the church. American culture is simply too pluralistic. Only a broad, inclusive, and bland civil religion could be comprehensive enough to encompass a cross section of the American population. If Locke was correct, when churches seek to enhance their authority by advocating state accommodation of religion, they stoop to a lower level of power and authority than Scripture has authorized and the Holy Spirit made available. American Christians may have to choose between, on the one hand, weak and theologically bland churches that are accommodated by the state and highly relevant to culture, and, on the other hand, strong and prophetic churches that stand against culture and are separated from the state.

Barry Hankins is associate director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church State Studies at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.




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ENDNOTES

[1]. "Christian Coalition Speakers Attack Church-State Separation," Church and State, October 1996, p. 7.
[2]. Ibid.
[3]. Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, and Ed Hindson, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence of Conservative Christianity (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Galilee, 1981), p. 189. In a five-point list of "how the Moral Majority stands on today's vital issues," Falwell and the other two authors cited as number one, "We believe in the separation of Church and State."
[4]. Richard Pierard, "Civil Religion: A Case Study Showing How Some Baptists Went Astray on the Separation of Church and State," Christian Ethics Today 2, No. 4 (November 1996): 4.
[5]. Rob Boston, The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition (Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 70.
[6]. D. James Kennedy, "Church and Society," American Family Association Journal, January 1993, p. 15. This journal is published and edited by Donald Wildmon, of Tupelo, Mississippi.
[7]. Davis Barton, The Myth of Separation: What Is the Correct Relationship Between Church and State? (Aledo, Tex.: Wallbuilder Press, 1989); "Consumer Alert! Wall Builders' Shoddy Workmanship," Church and State, July/August 1996, pp. 11-13. The Wall Builders' retraction is reproduced on page 13.
[8]. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38. Among other places the text of Rehnquist's dissent can be found in Robert T. Miller and Ronald B. Flowers, Toward Benevolent Neutrality: Church, State, and the Supreme Court, 5th ed. (Waco, Tex.: Markham Press of Baylor University Press, 1996), p. 333, 335, 336.
[9]. Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Locke's Philosophy of Religion," in Vere Chappell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 174.
[10]. Samuel C. Pearson, Jr., "The Religion of John Locke and the Character of His Thought," The Journal of Religion, 58 (July 1978): 248.
[11]. Frederick Dreyer, "Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley," American Historical Review 88: 21, 22.
[12]. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983), pp. 32, 33.
[13]. Ibid.
[14]. Ibid.
[15]. D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994), pp. 3, 4. My discussion of Machen is drawn largely from Hart's biography.
[16]. Hart, p. 138.


Article Author: Barry Hankins