My thanks to Jerald Turner and Eric
Settles for review and advice.
I write to advocate for the
continuation of a well-defined separation of Church and State. This is in no
way so that America will become absent of the Christian faith. It is to protect
the integrity of the Church, and its divine mission, from political corruption.
It may seem among many
Christians, and other faiths, that harnessing our government by religious faith
would “set us right with God.” But I am convinced that erasing the line between
state and Church would result in the Church becoming the lap dog of those in
political power.
I strongly assert that the
Church does not have the authority to abdicate Christ’s command for the church
to make disciples.
Matthew 28:19-20 teaches, “Therefore, go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I’ve
commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present
age.” (Common English Bible translation)
Christ never made any provision to outsource His
Great Commission to any government or other authority. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus, the Apostle
Paul, or Saint Peter instruct His followers to write letters to the Roman
Senate or Roman Emperor, urging the establishment of Christianity as the State
religion. It is clear from the New Testament writers that the work
of evangelism is solely within the realm of the Church.
I have heard many people claim
that “America was founded as a Christian nation.” I assert that the religious
condition in colonial, revolutionary America was more complicated than
“everybody shared the same Trinitarian ideas of Christianity.”
From our beginning, deism was an
idea held by many people of the day, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson,
and Thomas Paine, among others. Deism suggests
a distant, detached God, without regard to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or any of the
writers of Biblical Gospels or Epistles. The terms “Creator” and “Nature’s God” used
in the Declaration of Independence align closer to deism than
Christianity.
Aside from those facts is the
reality that on this continent, before Europeans arrived Original Peoples held
their own religious faith, and continued to do so throughout the colonial
period, thereby having a religious influence on arriving Europeans. More, when
slave traders brought slaves from Africa, they brought with them many different
religions that also continued throughout the colonial period, and even to this
day.
So, in its infancy, and still
today, America held numerous religious beliefs. But more to my point of
maintaining a separation of Church and state is the fact that, whatever
religious views the framers of our Constitution may have held, they did not
incorporate any of them in the Constitution, even when they had ample
opportunity to do so.
The Constitution was not a
hastily thrown together document. From May 25 of 1787 to September 17, 1787,
its text, ideas, and wording were carefully crafted. Yet, there is no language
that indicates or establishes that we were to be a “Christian”
nation.
Whatever sentiments of religion
our framers communicated in their personal correspondence privately; as
representatives of “The People,” they signed their names publicly to a
document to be the Law of the Land, and that resides
in the Constitution.
I point out a few areas of the Constitution where the
framers had opportunities to set a religious baseline, yet chose not to do so:
The Preamble, which serves to describe the scope and the intent of the
Constitution, we encounter these three words: “We the People.” Not “God
Almighty.”
This seems to me to be a direct
accommodation of the clause found in the Declaration of Independence: “Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed,” Furthermore, regarding that revolutionary
concept, while it is noble and one to
which most people in America would subscribe, it is in jarring conflict with,
and disobedience to the New Testament teaching that governments and rulers are
established by God and therefore we are to obey them (Romans 13:1, 1 Peter
2:13).
Also in reference to the
Preamble, there is no clause that has even a hint of any language or idea
indicating the establishment of a “Christian” form of Government.
The framers of the Constitution
could have easily inserted religious language, if they had chosen to do so.
But, instead, the scope of the Constitution provided by the Preamble reads, in
full, “We the People of the
United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
So, it seems the framers missed
several opportunities to address religious influence in the Preamble.
What’s more, within the body of
the Constitution…
The last paragraph in Article II
reads in full…Before he enter on the Execution of his Office,
he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or
affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United
States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States."
Please note that the phrase “So help me
God” is not present here. While those elected President have
chosen to speak those words while taking the oath of office, they have done so
as a matter of personal choice and conscience. Neither those words, nor their
sentiment, is required by the Constitution.
Clause 3, Article VI
reads: “but no religious Test shall ever be required as
a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This is
an explicit prohibition of religious favorability within government.
And of course, the First
Amendment to the Constitution also has obvious and explicit language regarding
religion…
“Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof;”
Returning to the religious
convictions of Native Americans, and Africans brought over on slave ships,
there is no language to prohibit their free exercise of religion. Indeed, the
Constitution is absolutely neutral as to religious matters.
If the framers had intended a
“Christian” form of government, I count at least six missed opportunities:
·
Two missed opportunities in the Preamble.
·
The lack of address to God in the President’s oath of office.
·
The prohibition of religious test to hold office.
·
The first amendment with its explicit language regarding religion.
·
The absence of prohibition on non-Christian religions known to
actively exist at the time of the writing of the Constitution.
All of this is not to say that
individual Christians, denominations, and/or other religious groups should
not advocate governments to improve the conditions of
those living in poverty, those who suffer violence, those who are trafficked,
or those who are oppressed in any way. Indeed, as people of faith, be it
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or others, we should feel compelled by our faith to
advocate for the “least of these.” (Matthew 25:46)
Nowhere even in the Declaration
of Independence is there any compulsion for anyone to subscribe to any
particular expression of religious faith. Government cannot instill sincere
religious faith in anyone. Government can only indoctrinate a people,
and thereby cause them to be absent any genuineness of faith.
My appeal to Christians is to apply our resources
of time, money, and social capital according to models present in the New
Testament; models of conversion that are effective. The Church best
achieves Christ’s Great Commandment by making its argument in
the free market of ideas, as Apostle Paul modeled for us in Acts 17:16-34.
If we want America to be a Christian nation in
fact, not just electoral rhetoric, then Christians must actively try to change
hearts, rather than be obsessed with dictating what other people must believe.
We must avoid the danger of becoming a lap dog of those who hold political
power, which is as fickle as musical tastes across generations. Christianity,
as well as other religions, is a faith of personal invitation, not political
coercion.
For these reasons, among so many others, I
believe that we must maintain and strengthen a separation of Church and State.
