{"id":99,"date":"2010-10-20T13:17:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T17:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/philosophicalfragments\/?p=99"},"modified":"2010-10-20T13:17:30","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T17:17:30","slug":"was-odonnell-right-about-the-separation-of-church-and-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2010\/10\/20\/was-odonnell-right-about-the-separation-of-church-and-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Was O'Donnell Right About the "Separation" of Church and State?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday, liberal blogs were delighted to find two occasions to mock Tea-Party-associated women.\u00a0 The first was provided by Sarah Palin, who warned Tea Partiers that they should not yet \u201cparty like it\u2019s 1773.\u201d\u00a0 This got a number of professionally opinionated people, from Markos Moulitsas (of \u201cDaily Kos\u201d fame) to Gwen Ifill, to marvel over Twitter about her stupidity.\u00a0 Surely she meant 1776!?<\/p>\n

Turns out she was referring to the actual Boston Tea Party, which took place in 1773.\u00a0 In context, the referent is clear.\u00a0 But bloggers and commentators did not bother to do a little research, so sure were they that they had found another example of the gobsmacking ignorance of Sarah Palin.\u00a0 Yet they were the ones with egg on their faces.<\/p>\n

The second example comes courtesy of Christine O\u2019Donnell.\u00a0 Now, I am not an O\u2019Donnell fan.\u00a0 I would rather she win than Coons, but she is not my kind of candidate.\u00a0 Still, she should be represented honestly.\u00a0 So what happened?<\/p>\n

During a debate at a law school, her opponent, Chris Coons, said that one of the \u201cindispensable principles\u201d of Constitutional law is \u201cthe separation of church and state.\u201d\u00a0 Anyone who is familiar with conservative thought on faith and politics will know that this raises a red flag.\u00a0 Christine O\u2019Donnell obviously thought that she might be able to back Coons into a trap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere in the Constitution is the separation of Church and State?\u201d she asked O\u2019Donnell.\u00a0 As the video shows<\/a>, there is laughter and disbelief in the auditorium; you can hear people in the crowd exclaim, \u201cOh my God!\u201d\u00a0 (Later they say, as though addressing her, \u201cYou know nothing!\u00a0 You know nothing!\u201d)\u00a0 (Surveys consistently show that the great majority of people believe \u201cthe wall of separation\u201d is in the Constitution; it is a shame that the same must be said of law students.)<\/p>\n

Coons says this question \u201creveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is, how it is amended, and how it evolves.\u00a0 The first amendment establishes the separation\u2013\u201d here he pauses, and shifts course, \u201c\u2013and the fact that the federal government shall not establish any religion, and decisional law by the Supreme Court over many decades clarifies and enshrines that there is a separation of church and state that our church and state must respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coons clearly understands the point she wants to make \u2014 that the phrase \u201cseparation of church and state\u201d does not actually appear in the First Amendment or anywhere in the Constitution.\u00a0 The \u201cwall of separation\u201d metaphor comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote, many years after the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written, to a group of Baptists from Danbury, Connecticut (James Madison also sometimes referred to \u201cthe separation of church and state\u201d).\u00a0 O\u2019Donnell is trying to get him to say that \u201cseparation of church and state\u201d is in the Constitution.\u00a0 He is trying to avoid saying that, and wants to say instead that the principle of separation has become enshrined as a matter of Constitutional law through later Supreme Court decisions.<\/p>\n

Thus when O\u2019Donnell presses the issue, saying, \u201cYou\u2019re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?\u201d\u2013Coons responds: \u201cThe government shall make no establishment of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those in the crowd, or at least the most vocal among them, clearly do not <\/em>understand the debate behind the debate.\u00a0 The Huffington Post<\/a> also shows its ignorance, or its unwillingness to explain the nuances of the issue in the midst of its eagerness to paint O\u2019Donnell as a moron, when it leads off its article:<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublican Senate nominee Christine O\u2019Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet these are two different things.\u00a0 Barring the establishment of a state religion is not the same thing as separating religion and government.\u00a0 Religion and government could work together in any number of ways without the establishment of a state church.\u00a0 As Daniel Foster points out<\/a>, O\u2019Donnell has led two organizations that have lobbied Congress to incorporate Christian values into their legislation; she knows the First Amendment and is aware of debates over the issue.<\/p>\n

Of course, when you\u2019re in high dudgeon, it\u2019s hard to be corrected.\u00a0 William Saletan at Slate<\/em> notes how O\u2019Donnell emphasizes the word \u201cfirst,\u201d and argues she \u201cit\u2019s the citation that surprises her.\u201d\u00a0 She \u201cseems incredulous not just at Coons\u2019 position against government-established religion, but that he bases it on the First Amendment.\u201d\u00a0 To my mind, this is clearly wrong.\u00a0 She is trying to nail him down, trying to get him to say that the first amendment separates church and state.\u00a0 Then she will be able to show that he really doesn\u2019t know what it is in the First Amendment.\u00a0 Coons, to his credit, avoids the trap.\u00a0 Yet he also gives only a very partial recitation of the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Behind this little tiff is a serious question \u2013 debated not only by the Christine O\u2019Donnells of the world, but also be Supreme Court Justices such as Rehnquist and Scalia.\u00a0 Perhaps a \u201cwall of separation\u201d is not the most helpful metaphor when it comes to the relationship between religious groups and the government.\u00a0 The establishment and free exercise clauses prohibit the state from establishing an official church or from interfering in church matters; they do not prohibit the church from some forms of involvement in government, and that <\/em>is why \u201cseparation\u201d is a dubious metaphor. Even Jefferson, whose skepticism toward orthodox Christianity is well known, attended church services in the capitol.\u00a0 He supported<\/a> the use of government funds for the construction of churches, for chaplains in the military, and even to support missionaries to Native Americans.\u00a0 None of this made him a Christian Reconstructionist or a Theocrat.<\/p>\n

The establishment and free exercise clauses are arguably uni-directional; they prevent the state from interfering in the church.\u00a0 The \u201cseparation\u201d metaphor is bi-directional; neither side can influence the other.\u00a0 In the context of Jefferson\u2019s broader thought, even he, the coiner of the separation phrase, clearly believed that religion could be involved in some ways in government.\u00a0 And there are indeed two live options on this issue today.\u00a0 Liberals by and large want to minimize the role of religion in the public square.\u00a0 Conservatives believe that religion has a vital, vital role to play in the public square, and that many attempts to chase religion from the public square actually \u201cinterfere with the free exercise thereof.\u201d\u00a0 Thus Scalia has objected that the \u201cwall\u201d metaphor has functioned as a \u201cbulldozer\u201d to remove religion from the public square.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Coons was not willing to explain the issue fully, and O\u2019Donnell never did.\u00a0 This is a teachable moment over a legitimate disagreement on the Constitution and constitutional law, but, unsurprisingly, it is passing by with a lot of sound and fury but very little actual edification.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, liberal blogs were delighted to find two occasions to mock Tea-Party-associated women.\u00a0 The first was provided by Sarah Palin, who warned Tea Partiers that they should not yet \u201cparty like it\u2019s 1773.\u201d\u00a0 This got a number of professionally opinionated people, from Markos Moulitsas (of \u201cDaily Kos\u201d fame) to Gwen Ifill, to marvel over Twitter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-separation-of-church-and-state","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWas O'Donnell Right About the "Separation" of Church and State? - Philosophical Fragments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday, liberal blogs were delighted to find two occasions to mock Tea-Party-associated women.\u00a0 The first was provided by Sarah Palin, who warned Tea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2010\/10\/20\/was-odonnell-right-about-the-separation-of-church-and-state\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Was O'Donnell Right About the "Separation" of Church and State? 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