On Separation of Church and State
I woke up this morning, made coffee, and opened the news. Incredibly, the first thing I read was that Jenna Ellis, a senior legal advisor for the Trump 2020 campaign said that separation of church and state is a — wait for it — liberal lie.
“‘Separation of church and state’ is a myth perpetuated by liberals to pretend morality and religion cannot be part of government,” she said in Zoom event hosted by Asian Pacific Americans for Trump. “The left is going to tell you there’s this separation of church and state, and that’s just nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in American law.”
Other than the simple fact it’s not a “lie,” but a governing principle of republicanism and democracy that dates back to the 18th century, I’m going to just briefly remind that the separation of Church and State is a founding pillar of the United States of America. We also call it freedom of religion. Religious pluralism is a tenet of this nation, emblazoned in all its founding documents. Any high-schooler knows as much. The early settlers literally fled state religion in the United Kingdom when they came to these shores. Any middle-schooler knows as much.
In a Republican Democracy, State religion could not possibly exist, because in any given election, the government could find itself comprised of people of a different religion (and specifically different than yours.) What happens when the president and his/her administration do not belong to the State religion? Or the majority of Congress? Or the Supreme Court? Say, instead of Baptist or Episcopalian, they are all Lutheran. Or Catholic. Or Jewish. Or Muslim. Or Sikh. Or Hindu. What then? Do we change the State religion, based on who is elected? Every 4 years? What if each individual state has a different preferred denomination? The North Plains are more Lutheran, while the Southeast is Baptist. Texas and Florida have giant Catholic populations. Utah is Mormon. How can there be one national religion with such diversity? Do state rights prevail in the choice or does the federal government? And if there was one national religion, who gets to pick? Do we vote? By universal suffrage or state-by-state? Because, here’s the deal: Protestantism is on the decline, Catholicism is on the rise, and a quarter of the population self-identifies as non-religious with that segment growing the fastest. Separation protects all denominations from the supremacy of one chosen national religion, whichever that religion might be, that very well may not be yours. Would you rather not have that protection? And for Republicans: when Democrats are in power and hold all three branches of government, would you still want your religion to be dependent on the State?
Separation is a protective mechanism for the Church, as much as it is one for the State. It keeps each institution safe from the whims of the other. It allows for the freedom of worship that we so value in this nation. The Fathers of the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers knew all this when they devised the republic and, more generally, modern democracy. That people are still fuzzy about this 250 years later is beyond me. Then again, another Trump adviser said that having sex with demons makes you sick, so there.