A viewer takes USTV to task for supposed ill-informed commentary regarding the nature of church and state in our republic.

You guys aren’t funny or clever or even well informed. You can smugly dismiss the opposition’s arguments, but that doesn’t make you right. Pat Robertson was correct that “separation of church and state” do not exist in the Constitution. The words simply aren’t there. Read it. The 1st Amendment has two clauses relating to religion, free exercise and establishment. This means Congress cannot establish a religion or prevent the free exercise thereof. Establishment has been taken to mean a “separation of church and state” based on Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, which is not a legal document, but a letter. Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have separation of church and state. I think it’s a pretty good policy. But the Constitution simply doesn’t demand it. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but it’s a fact. So you can put up all the nutjob Pat Robertson quotes you can dig up, and declare that this proves that Christians are hatemongers and want to destroy Democracy if you want, but that doesn’t make it accurate. And no one’s trying to create a theocracy except the Islamofascists like Bin Laden and Zarqawi. You should try taking a look at the world that they want to create. Pull your collective heads out and you might realize who the real threats to our way of life in a liberal democracy are.

Dear (Viewer),

Given your assessment of our mental acumen, America is lucky that the principle of separation of church and state rests not on our wit, but on the Constitution, its authors and signers, and the affirmations of constitutional principle by our Judicial branch.

It is true that Jefferson wrote a letter wherein the phrase “separation of church and state” was coined, and that the phrase itself does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. However, Jefferson’s eloquence was not the first statement by a founder explaining the original intent to keep church and state separate, nor was it the most significant. The primary author of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote the following, two years before the Constitution was ratified by the states:

From Memorial and Remonstrance
Against Religious Assessments
Written by James Madison, 1785

Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

Granted, Madison’s language here is structurally ornate by contemporary standards, but persevere; the meaning is quite clear, and serves as the surest possible indication of the intent of the founders. The founders’ intent was to ensure that the government provided no legislative, and thus no material, aid to religion.

In addition to Madison’s explication of the philosophical underpinnings that inspired the First Amendment, there is also Supreme Court precedent affirming the relevence of Jefferson’s statement in his letter to the Danbury Baptists. Regardless of what contortions might be applied to eighteenth century prose by people with specific agendas relating to their own beliefs, judicial review, the responsibility of the Supreme Court for the interpretation of the Constitution, has been settled law for over two centuries, since shortly after the Constitution was ratified.

Below is relevant case language, written over fifty years ago, in which the unconstitutionality of an attempt by a local school board to infringe against free exercise by imposing an establishment was clarified:

Everson v. Board of Education [of Ewing Township, Montana] 330 U.S. 1, 15-16., 1947:

“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between Church and State.’ ”

Although Everson v. Board is not the only case in which this principle is affirmed, and neither the first nor last, it is the most explicit in its clarification.

Also noteworthy, if tangentially relevant is the content of Article II, which confers the power to make treaties, and gives treaties the binding force of law. This is important because in the text of a 1796 United States treaty with the Barbary States, The Treaty of Tripoli, is found the following:

“. . . the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”.

While this treaty language, although it has the force of law, does not explicitly reinforce the establishment clause per se, it begs the question: Is there any religious foundation of the U.S. government, and if so what is it? The answers are self-evident: If not based on Christianity, it must be construed to have no religious foundation. This is important because any suggestion that the founders did not mean what they wrote in the Constitution and in the overwhelming preponderance of their letters and other writings is dashed by this Congressionally ratified treaty.

Conversely, and wishful thinking and protestations aside, there is precious little writing by any of the founders to suggest that they intended our republic to have a pious tenor, and none whatsoever by Madison or Jefferson, authors of the the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, respectively. Those who insist that the founders were Christians, or meant for the United States to be guided by the principles of Christianity or any other religion, inevitably rely on peripheral figures to argue their case.

Regarding contemporary questions, I agree with you that fundamentalist Islamic radicals promote a vision that is inimical to democracy and freedom of conscience. One cannot, however, objectively read the totality of the statements of either Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell without concluding that they are enemies of democracy and freedom of conscience as well. Perhaps they are not doing what the radical Islamists are doing, trying to create a theocracy as you say, because our Constitution and traditions of law stand in their way. It is reasonable to speculate that if they were operating in a different millieu, they might be behaving much more like their Islamic counterparts. Luckily, we have not had to experience that different scenario.

You should know that neither Andy nor myself are athiests or materialists. I consider the spiritual dimension of my life to be equivalent to what Plato described as the first form, the foundational form upon which all else rests. That is my attempt at understanding the universe, and although I think that we humans, mere mortals that we are, cannot comprehend even the full material extent of the universe, never mind the extramaterial dimensions that are apparently integral to it, there is more to existence than the material.

I do not, however have any desire to impose my limited apprehension of existence on anyone else, nor do they have the right to impose, even to the slightest degree, their limited apprehensions upon me, as I am certain that their understandings, regardless of how steeped in any religious traditions they may be, have no more epistemological validity or authority than mine. That is one of the beauties of being an American and of enjoying the protections of the Constitution that the founders bequeathed us.

God help us if we squander the Constitution because of spiritual hubris.

Ed Lacy
UnCommon Sense TV Media