By Cecil Bell Jr. 05.19.10
This article appeared in the Magnolia Potpourri 5/19/10
The separation of church and state was not the intent of the Founding Fathers who were making sure that there could never be a “Church of England” created by our government, right?
How many times have you made that argument when our Christian rights and liberties were attacked by liberal judges under the auspice that Christianity is unconstitutional?
If that is our defense where do we find the words which we contend are being twisted and misapplied?
Are they in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or maybe one of the amendments to the Constitution?
The answer may surprise you. This phrase is not found in any of those documents.
The First Amendment which we know as the Establishment Clause contains the closest language and reads Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
These words which are straight forward and easy to understand became part of our Constitution on December 15, 1791 when Virginia ratified the first ten amendments which aggregate to form what we as American citizens know to be our Bill of Rights.
Given that separation of church and state is not in any of our foundational documents how do we as Christians find ourselves debating the intent of the Founding Fathers regarding this statement?
The answer is found in the 1962 case logs of the United States Supreme Court.
The historical stage is set in 1962, our troops are being deployed to Korea and we are a nation acutely aware of the spread of communism.
Consequently some states have created mandatory programs encouraging moral character and spiritual behavior.
It would be the noncompulsory use of an nonsectarian prayer which read “Almighty God we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country” by the public schools in the state of New York which would bring this to the forefront when the parents of ten children attending New Hyde Park schools filed suit in a New York State Court against the New York Board of Regents claiming that this prayer was contrary to their collective beliefs.
The state appeals court upheld the use of the prayer, “so long as the schools did not compel any pupil to join in the prayer over his or his parents’ objection.”
The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide if the prayer of the Regents of New York violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In a 6-1 decision the Supreme Court ruled the prayer to be unconstitutional.
With Justice Hugo Black writing the opinion for the majority wherein he wrote:
“We think that by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents’ Regents Prayer, the State of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause.”
Black went on to explain that “The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its ‘unhallowed perversion’ by a civil magistrate”.
Black claimed that the Court’s decision was not anti-religious seeking only to affirm the separation between church and state, penning “It is neither sacrilegious nor antireligious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers.”
Black contended the Court acted to uphold the intent of the Founding Fathers so how did the Court come to the conclusion that the Establishment Clause was written to insure the separation of Church and State?
Black and his fellow jurists’ found the basis for the majority opinion in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association where Jefferson analogically defined the Establishment Clause as “a wall of Separation between the Church and State”.
Other letters from Jefferson indicate that during the time that the First Amendment was written he was away from the United States serving as an ambassador on business in Europe.
Ironically, we’ve been debating the intent of Jefferson’s letter and not that of the Founding Fathers!
Our argument should be that the Establishment Clause is concise in the conveyance of the author’s intent to protect American citizens from the government establishment of a national religion.
When confronted by those who hold to the separation of church and state defense, we need to know where those words are found and how they came to prominence.
On election days we must consider that vacancies on the Supreme Court are filled by Presidential appointment and that when confirmed by the Senate those appointments are for life.
Our society will live with the precedents established by these Justices for generations.
It is by God’s grace that we have this unique government wherein we are granted the ability to be self governed by exercising our right to select those individuals who will lead us.
History affirms that the failure of the Christian majority to exercise its God-given right to vote empowers those who hold contradictory views and foreign interests.
It is time to be self governed again.
Editor’s note: Bell, a local Magnolia businessman and Magnolia Independent School District school board trustee, is filling in for Scot Wall while he is on vacation.
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