Many have heard in recent times the ACLU’s catchphrase, coined by their patron saint, Thomas Jefferson. That phrase is “separation of church and state”. It is has been used in Supreme Court decisions since 1879. Firstly, what did Jefferson actually mean by “separation of church and state”, and secondly, is it valid to use this term in judicial decisions?
The phrase “separation of church and state” was coined by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the congregation of Danbury Baptist Association, a church in Connecticut. He wrote to them in 1802 to affirm their religious freedom. He was not telling them to refrain from political activity. Rather he was releasing them from fear of government regulation. Furthermore, his “wall of separation of church and state” was a metaphor, not a concrete doctrine. Jefferson was not against church involvement in the government. He was against government-sanctioned churches. The majority of American colonists (and later U.S. citizens) had come from government-sanctioned religious backgrounds. Whether it was the Puritans who fled from the Crown-controlled Church of England or the French Hugenots who fled from the hostile Catholic government-sanctioned church of France, most Americans understood the feeling of having their religious lives controlled by the government. The American founding fathers didn’t want this to happen in the United States and therefore came up with the First Amendment which in part states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. To think that Jefferson didn’t want Christians participating in political activity is completely untrue. He supported the “free exercise of religion”. He didn’t want to restrict religion he wanted to restrict government.
However, like many other things throughout history, this phrase “separation of church and state” was misunderstood. In 1879, George Reynolds, a Mormon, was put on trial for marrying more than one woman, a Mormon practice. This violated the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act however and he was brought to trial. He pleaded his case on four main arguments, one of which was his right to “free exercise of religion”. The court disagreed with him however and made a thorough overview of the history of religious freedom in America. This was the first case in which the “separation of church and state” came up. I find in surprising that that clause was brought up in court seeing as it was not law, nor even a citation from a past case ruling. The clause appeared in a private correspondence and the principle was one man’s personal opinion, not American law. Why are we still ruling religious cases based on the wrongly understood, wrongly used, metaphorical philosophy of one man?