Reinforcing the church-state wall

By Jim Burkee ("Los Angeles Times," March 1, 2012)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/36957/

USA - American conservatives are deeply divided about Thomas Jefferson. His Democratic-Republican Party embraced many bedrock conservative principles, favoring states' rights, opposing attempts by the Federalists to strengthen the federal government and generally promoting individual liberty and freedom. And for those things he remains a hero and a paragon to the modern Republican Party's fiscally conservative, libertarian and tea party wing.

But many religious conservatives are less comfortable with Jefferson. America's third president was a deist, at best, who authored his own interpretation of the New Testament, removing all references to Jesus' divinity. More significantly, he penned the phrase many social conservatives have in recent decades denounced, advocating a steadfast "wall of separation between church and state."

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum revived the debate about separating church and state this week when he talked about a 1960 campaign trail speech given by the nation's 35th president, John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy gave the speech to address fears that he, as a Roman Catholic, would answer to the pope rather than the U.S. Constitution. In it, he said that he believed in "an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

That was a sentiment, Santorum said, "that makes me throw up." He excoriated Kennedy, saying that he had "for the first time articulated the vision saying, 'No. Faith is not allowed in the public square.'"

Santorum was off historically by more than 150 years in his assertion that Kennedy was the first American president to advocate a wall between church and state. And his clear misreading of Kennedy's statement also exposes a deeper misunderstanding by social conservatives of the exceptionalism of American church-state relations.

Keeping government and religion separate in no way has meant that America is not a religious nation. Among advanced Western nations, only the United States continues to experience steady rates of church attendance. Each week, roughly 40 percent of Americans attend religious services, according to most recent surveys.

In Western Europe, by contrast, Christianity is moribund. In Nordic Europe, 3 percent to 5 percent of the population goes to church regularly. In Britain, 1 in 10 attend. In France, 12 percent go to church. And in Germany, home to Martin Luther, 13 percent attend.

Yet in European countries there is a long history of intertwining church and state. In the 19th century, Lutherans came to the United States to escape the arm of state-supported churches. While some European states are now officially secular, to this day the British monarch must be a Protestant, and Norway and Denmark remain officially Lutheran.

The American experience has, at least since the Revolution, been markedly different. The steady strength of America's Christian denominations is their existence in a religious marketplace where, as religious scholar Martin Marty argues, they have consistently had to adapt to a changing cultural and spiritual marketplace or die. The same creative destruction that shapes corporate America also guides American Christianity: Those most responsive to the changing needs of Americans survive and grow, while those who fail to adapt quickly fade.

Christianity does well when the state stays out of its business and allows this marketplace of ideas to thrive. Historically, it has thrived in the face of benign or even oppositional states, from Imperial Rome to modern China. And it's strange that so many conservative Christians - people who typically defend a free marketplace and oppose government overreach - don't get this.

When the state and religion become intertwined, religion suffers. Across America this year, attorneys for America's largest Christian denominations will be warning their pastors to avoid talking politics from the pulpit. Why? Because most churches accept the federal government's 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, allowing the state to place restrictions on what their pastors and priests can say. Christian colleges that accept federal aid subject themselves to similar restrictions. If you take state money, you risk federal involvement. It's one reason some conservative colleges are now refusing all federal aid, and some of America's best religious-based charities and missions do the same.

Both major political parties are plagued by deep inconsistencies. Democrats who advocate for a strong, regulatory state are often social and cultural libertarians, while free-market, laissez-faire Republicans too often support robust state intervention on social issues.

Conservatives would do well to remember that although Jefferson was inconsistently liberal (he enslaved fellow human beings, after all), he was consistent in his belief that for government to be small anywhere, it has to be small everywhere.

Conservatives should reinforce that wall separating church from state. It is one of the primary reasons American Christianity remains so vibrant.