Simply put, it means that the government will have absolutely nothing to do with religion. It will neither support nor supress any set of religious beliefs. It will remain completely neutral. The lack of mention of the word God in the Constitution is good evidence in this favor - as it was common to mention God in just about every legal document at the time - all of the state constitutions before the USA was formed not only mentioned God, but made their beliefs clear in those documents. The total exclusion was highly unusual at the time.
Also see the Letter to the Danbury Baptists.
Some have suggested this term is not accurate enough, and should be changed to fit the words of James Madison, as "separation of religion and government".
Many of the Religious Right believe that seperation doesn't/shouldn't exist, or claiming it was only to prevent a national church from being set up - however, if this was intended, why did they, during the debates when creating the Bill of Rights, reject that wording?
To Sudderth: Is it possible to have Christian control over government and not have governmental control of Christianity in return? If religious belief exerts control over laws and decisions of the government, then you're controlling which form of religious belief is acceptable. If the government passes a law making something considered bad by one religion illegal, then any other religion in that country is then bound by that law - and a religion that considers that action good is no longer free, and is being controlled by the government.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Unfortunately part of the problem is that we were kinda-sorta-but-not-articulately founded on the concept of religious freedom, but certainly not on religious pluralism. On this subject, you could probably count the founding fathers in two categories:
The intellectuals, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who meant what they said. (Jefferson's gravestone epitaph lists the three things he was proudest of: the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia, and author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom. Franklin was an avowed deist.)
The rest of them, who were far more worked up about the King's role as head of the Church of England. For them, religious freedom meant freedom from governmental control of Christianity; Christian control of the government wasn't altogether offensive.
That's one of the wacky things I love about this country; the schizophrenic split between the rustic Puritan influence and intellectual liberalism was there at the founding and survives today.
There are so many reasons why this separation is a good thing for even us Christians:
On one hand, we want a law that says "do not kill", yet we want to lawfully allow people to be selfish in their choices, which is just as much a condemning sin as murder. The conflict between allowing people to be selfish and giving other things precedence has resulted in a few controversies. Perhaps the basis of our laws should be secular morality - to leave the judging to God.
Right, the Bible, the Quran, Talmud and alikes are words of God. Some rules are so clear there's no danger of misinterpretation. It is written that there are certain things you shouldn't do and some things you really should. And the words of God, well, they should be taken a bit more seriously than, say, a moral statement of a layman. A layman may be wrong but God hardly is, don't you think so?
If I ever convert to Christianity or return to Islam or find any other religion to be the one and only I would plead the reunion of religion and state with the great fervour. Doing otherwise would be like handing a fellow-man a one-way ticket to hell. The political system of a country like Iran would be the pursuit of dream. (Note: I don't know the details of the political system of Iran but this is my impression.) You should care about your brother and told him to do the right thing.
Yes, I see the problem here. When pleading for your, your God's moral discipline to consist the totality of country you may cause more hatred than good. For example, the prohibitionary liquor law begot more harm than it prevented - at least in short term, say 10 years or so. We don't know if the next generation would have abandoned alcohol if had been criminalized for good and thus the supply limited. Would the damage have been acceptable during the period of transition compared to the bliss of drastically lesser consumption of liquors of future generations? I would go for it.
To conclude, I would say that everyone would like to see her values spread over the society. A liberal layman like me tolerates many things one personally disapproves. If someone harms none but herself it's not my business but if she offends the words of God she has just stepped over the line. Or is it just me being a potential fundamentalist..?
John Calvin preached religious liberty - right up until he gained power in Geneva, turning it into a theocratic dictatorship where only his personal brand of Christianity could be preached - what we today call Presbyterianism. In Russia, the Orthodox Church for centuries maintained a stranglehold on art and literature. The entire history of the Roman Catholic Church at least up to the Reformation is nothing less than a record of repression, oppression, atrocity and conquest in the name of the Messiah. And (since I seem to be concentrating exclusively on Christianity) let's not forget the brutal oppression in many Muslim nations - most notably Afghanistan under the recently-ousted Taliban, Iran under the ayatollahs, and Saudi Arabia - of women, of religious minorities (including Muslim sects which are a minority in a given country; or even a Muslim sect which is a majority but has no political power), of most anyone with differing cultural or moral values. Why? Not because Islam is necessarily less tolerant than Christianity or other religions (ever actually read what the Bible has to say about "nonbelievers"?), but because in most Muslim nations religious leaders are closely tied to the state (or in some cases, directly in command of it).
Moreover, collusion between the state and a religion will often cause the reduction or evaporation of religious liberty. Why has such a variety of religions and sects thrived in the United States? Because the state cannot dictate doctrine to a church, and because no church has the power to impose its doctrines on the masses by way of the state. This was, in fact, the primary reason that Christian members of the Continental Congress (who did after all greatly outnumber the Deists) agreed to the establishment clause in the First Amendment; nearly every colony wanted its own state church to be made the national church of the new nation, but given the choice between having no national church and having a rival church attain that status, the representatives preferred the former arrangement. Why? Because they knew, as I have written above, that when a religious entity is given political power, it automatically uses that power to destroy its opposition.
To put it succinctly: If you want to live in a theocracy, move to Iran. If you prefer to live in a place where all religious (and irreligious, for that matter) views are tolerated, you must live in a nation where this is a separation of church and state.
1: Someone is bound to point out that many democratic nations in Europe exist which have a state church. My response to this is; yes, there is a legal connection between the church and the state, but in most places it is archaic and state-church separation exists de facto for the most part. (The only notable exception I can think of is the continued teaching of Anglicanism in British public schools.) To make a comparison with another fact of modern government: In Britain, Queen Elizabeth II legally has control over all political power. That is to say, the Crown is considered the fount of the government's legitimacy. Legally, she could dissolve Parliament and declare herself absolute monarch of Britain. However in all practicality, if she did this, she would (I would hope) have little-to-no support from the people. Similarly, the law still on the books in Arizona that says two people of opposite sex can't room together unless they're related or married, while still having legality, is in reality archaic and unenforced and thus de facto has no legitimate power to keep two such people from doing that. 2: I am in no way suggesting that religious entities are the only such that tend to behave in this manner. For instance, under Stalinism, all religions and "subversive" (i.e. anti- or non-Stalinist) ideologies were banned in the Soviet Union (although you could argue, and many have, that communism itself is a kind of religion). I am only stating that most if not all religious entities behave in this way.
1) I am curious to see what evidence you have that there have been any siginificant trends towards atheism in the United States. I would find it especially interesting, considering that the ARIS 2001 poll1, which took a random sample of 50,000 people (allowing for a very, very tiny percentage of statistical error), found that approximately 2,000,000 Americans - or less than 1% - consider themselves atheists, agnostics, or otherwise nontheistic - and this is probably the most liberal number given in any such poll. Of course, if you include those who consider themselves "non-religious" - not a legitimate assumption to make when many people may be theists but not practitioners of an organized religion, although groups like American Atheists insist on doing it anyway - the number is 29.5 million, or about 14%; but even so, I don't believe this number has changed significantly in the last 30-40 years. Of course, I could be wrong. 2)In what way does government exist to promote morality? Do you believe the government should prosecute people for blasphemy or obscenity? Adultery? Recreational use of marijuana?
It seems to me the only extent to which the government has the legitimate right to promote a moral code is in reference to those actions which cause definite physical (as opposed to spiritual, not neglecting emotional and psychological) harm: murder, rape, child abuse, etc. Anything else is an infringement on the individual's rights and their moral autonomy.
For that matter, in what way is religion's aim to promote morality? Certainly, most religions prescribe a moral code in some shape or form, but that is not their primary purpose. The primary aim of a religion is to instill certain metaphysical and epistemological beliefs; the belief in a god, the belief in an afterlife or in reincarnation, the belief that the universe is not truly as it appears to our senses (idealism), etc. Moral standards are set within this framework: If your eschatology is that of a dichotomous heaven and hell, then there must be certain things you can do to get into heaven (or be trapped in hell).
More to the point, whose morality is it anyway? Even if I were to grant that the state and religions have as their ultimate aim the promotion of morality (and I don't), we still have to ask which morality is "best". Certainly the moral code of your average Christian fundamentalist is much different than that set laid out in the Humanist Manifestos. Who decides which is best when there are no objective standards of morality?
Finally: As I've said, all religions have their own metaphysical and epistemological doctrines which their followers necessarily believe in - and even if you disagree that this is the primary purpose of religion, I doubt you'll seriously contest that it is at least *one* of its main purposes. Under a theocracy - even the "truest and best", whatever that means - the religion in power can and almost certainly will enforce these views on the general public, possibly banning all opposing views. But what right does the government have to tell me whether or not I believe in God, or if I do what kind of God to believe in? What authority does Congress or the President have to determine whether I should believe in a heaven and hell, or in reincarnation, or in Valhalla, or in no afterlife at all? The answer is none; none whatsoever. But under a theocratic government, they would nonetheless have the power to do so. *That* is why seperation of church and state would always be necessary; even with the best of governments, even with the best of religions.
1: Source: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm
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