Published: June 21, 2008 11:43 pm            

Separation’s missing link

Citing the often misused phrase “separation of church and state”, the ACLU has threatened to sue the state of South Carolina for authorizing a license plate with the words I Believe above the image of the Cross.

The Palmetto State already had over 200 vanity plates available to motorists commemorating everything from hunting and fishing to favorite universities, from Choose Life to the Boy Scouts. But shortly after the South Carolina legislature voted unanimously to approve the I Believe plate, thought police from around the nation condemned the vote as un-Constitutional. Is it?

If you want to win an easy bet, challenge someone to find the phrase “separation of church and state” in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or any other founding document. It’s not there. Ironically, the single most quoted phrase whenever the issue of religion and government arises doesn’t exist in the Constitution.

The phrase came from a letter written by then-President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1801, when they were concerned that they might face discrimination as a minority denomination in predominantly Congregationalist state of Connecticut. Regarding the relationship of the federal government to religion, Jefferson wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people (the Constitution) which declared that their Legislature (the U.S. Congress) should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

Jefferson, who respected the Constitution as it was written, was reluctant to get involved in a purely state matter. Many times afterwards, including his second inaugural address, Jefferson reminded Americans that the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from establishing a religion and also correctly pointed out that by virtue of the Tenth Amendment, powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution were reserved to the various states and their people. In other words, if the duly elected representatives of a state, county, or municipality wish to display the Ten Commandments, celebrate Christmas, or light a menorah on public property, it is none of the federal government’s business.

The wall of separation Jefferson mentioned became prominently misused in constitutional law beginning in 1947 when the Supreme Court quoted the metaphor in the first of many rulings designed to remove God from the public square under the pretext of preserving the Bill of Rights. The notion stuck. Today, many Americans can’t quote the First Amendment but repeat a phrase plucked out of a letter from Jefferson to a Baptist Association as if it superseded the Constitution.

The Bill of Rights, our legal foundation, begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Although volumes have been written, the interpretation is quite simple. The word Congress throughout the Constitution refers to the federal legislature. The federal government is prohibited from positively acting to create a national church and negatively proscribed from interfering with worship anywhere in these United States.

If individual states want to build a bigger wall of separation or even declare themselves to be secular humanists, they are free to do so with the power of the ballot in their own amendment process.

The ACLU and other anti-Christian groups like them may propose all the atheistic amendments they choose to their respective state constitutions. Heck, they can drive all the way out into the country to our house to ask for my signature on a petition. We’ll have them in for a glass of tea and exercise our First Amendment right to share the gospel with them.



Craig Ziemba is a military pilot who lives in Meridian. To schedule Craig to speak at your event, contact him at craigziemba@aol.com.

        

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