Religion and Politics, Part IV

The Bill of Rights was submitted to the states for ratification in 1789 as a revision to the Constitution. The original Constitutional Convention rejected the inclusion of the Bill of Rights within the Constitution itself. However, many at the Constitutional Convention, as well as those within the states who were required to ratify the Constitution, objected to the lack of protection for individual rights within its main body. Knowing that the Constitution’s ratification was at risk, James Madison pushed through the Congress a series of amendments to the Constitution protecting individual rights, which also required state ratification. Ten of the original twelve amendments, along with the Constitution, were ratified by a sufficient number of states to make it the basic law of the land. The Bill of Rights constitutes the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment protects the following freedoms: speech, press, association, petitioning the government, and religion. Interestingly, this great declaration of freedoms begins with what’s known as the establishment of religion clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” In other words, the First Amendment, which lays out various individual rights of the people, begins with the statement of prohibiting the government from establishing a religion. Why?

As I wrote in Part III, the founding fathers were very cognizant of the dangers of state-sponsored churches from European history. Their goal was to protect religious expression in the new nation and to prevent the commonplace amalgamation of Church and State. Several years after the enactment of the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson, as President, wrote the following: ““I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” In this particular case, as President of the United States, Jefferson was responding to a Baptist church in Danbury, Connecticut, which was concerned that the Constitution assumed governmental authority over religious liberty, which they viewed as an inalienable right. Jefferson’s response assured them that there was a wall of separation between the government and religion, because religion was a matter between a person and his God and that man is accountable to no one other than God with regard to his beliefs.

Both Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the father of the Constitution, had battled in Virginia with the State-sponsored Anglican Church. They both felt it was improper for citizens of the state to pay taxes that, in turn, would be used for clergy’s salaries and the upkeep of churches. Without a doubt, the founding fathers tried to build a government that protected religious belief and worship while ensuring that no one religious institution was preferred over another.

On the other hand, at the time of the Constitution’s ratification the United States was largely a Protestant nation. All of the founding fathers were associated with Protestant denominations. Significant Catholic immigration didn’t begin until the mid-19th century. Jewish presence was infinitesimal. Yet, even then, President Washington wrote a famous letter to an early Jewish synagogue in Rhode Island ensuring that Jewish citizens would be treated as others: “for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Nevertheless, massive immigration to the United States since the mid-19th century brought numerous religious expressions and cultures. The dominant Protestant culture felt threatened by these newer expressions and an ever-growing secular one. Consequently, there has been push back. Beginning in the 19th century and expanding into the 20th and 21st centuries, religious groups and organizations have sought to change American public policy. Next time: Religion enters political space.