Religion and State: How High the Wall?

 

 

The Rev. Ron Sala

The Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

October 17, 2004

 

 

In my office, I have a stack of Unitarian Universalist indulgences, like this one. Another minister gave them to me. An indulgence is a piece of paper granting immunity for punishment for sin. These indulgences are good for minor infractions of our Principles and Purposes. However, they aren’t good for the offence of not voting in a presidential election, so you’d better vote!

These UU indulgences are, of course, a joke. But, the real ones they’re based on were anything but. The letters of indulgence sold by the Roman Catholic Church back in the 16^th century were a key grievance of the emerging Protestant movement. Robbing a church and committing perjury would cost one nine ducats; the sin of murder would cost eight ducats.[1] The money went to pay for grand building projects.

The 19^th century historian Lord Acton famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Nowhere has this been more true than in the pre-Reformation Church. Barbara W. Tuchman devotes a chapter of her book The March of Folly to the Renaissance popes. It was a time when those in the highest positions of religious authority had little or no interest in religion, but gained their offices in search of temporal wealth and power. The espoused values of the church were disregarded by those with enough pull to get away with it. High church officials were murdered by their rivals, and wild sex parties were held in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Inquisition persecuted scientists, artists, Pagans, Jews, and anyone else whose beliefs diverged from the official line.

Enter Martin Luther. His faith was genuine, as was that of millions of his fellow rank-and-file Catholics. According to legend, Luther had become a monk after coming face-to-face with death from a lightning strike. He yearned to serve his fellow believers, but was sickened by the corruption he saw in the Church. One of his sayings was, “Faith is under the left nipple.” He emphasized the role of individual conscience in matters of religion over that of institutions.

Luther also spoke often of two types of government that should not interfere with each other, one sacred, the other secular. This idea wasn’t new and can be traced back to the Bible and earlier Christian centuries. But Luther contended that the universal church had blurred the boundaries between the sacred and secular and made a mess of things. In his own words,

 

‘The Pope and the bishops should look to their episcopal duty and preach God’s Word. This task they have neglected to become secular princes, ruling through laws which pertain only to the body and property. They have finely turned [God’s order] inside out, for while they are supposed to rule souls inwardly through God’s Word, in fact they rule castles, cities, land and people outwardly, torturing souls with unspeakable murder. Secular lords are likewise meant to rule land and people outwardly. Neglectful of this task, . . .they wish to rule souls in a spiritual capacity.’[2]

 

Luther was not perfect. He was certainly anti-Semitic. And many dissident thinkers and more radical reformers would find themselves persecuted by the Protestant governments he inspired, just as they continued to be under Catholic ones. Nevertheless, religion and state took another small step apart, which would eventually be felt in all the countries of Europe, whether Protestant or Catholic.

Enter Dávid Farenc, better known to English speakers as Francis David. In his country, Transylvania, there was incessant conflict between Catholics and Protestants. What’s more, the Protestants were often at odds, with Lutherans and Calvinists competing for converts and influence on the state.

Transylvania, if you don’t know, is now part of Romania. There’s still a sizable Unitarian community there. I’ve met some of them.

Francis David was a clergyman in Transylvania who starts life as a Catholic, rejects that. Becomes a Lutheran, rejects that. Becomes a Calvinist, in fact a Calvinist Bishop. Finally, he converts to Unitarianism. (Sounds like many of us here, doesn’t it?)

In 1566, he becomes court preacher to King John Sigismund, who was also a Unitarian. Just two years later, Francis David persuades the Transylvanian diet to pass a law, the Edict of Torda, that declares the right to freedom in choosing one’s religion. It also officially recognizes the main religious groups in the country: Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist. The Unitarians were officially considered part of the Calvinists. Other religious groups, namely Jews and Orthodox Christians, were, unfortunately, merely “tolerated.” Or perhaps we should say “fortunately” tolerated, since religious minorities were often violently intolerated, if you will, elsewhere in the era. It was the first such declaration by a nation state. In cruel irony, Francis David himself became a victim of religious intolerance after Catholics regained control of the country. He died of illness in prison.

To give credit where credit is due, Francis David and King John may not have been able to have accomplished their short-lived victory for religious liberty without the help of Moslems. You see, Transylvania at the time was under the control of the tolerant, multi-religious, Ottoman Empire, which protected the country from the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Let’s jump ahead a couple of hundred years to Colonial America. Various colonies have their own official forms of government. Maryland is Catholic, New England is Congregational, et cetera.

Here in Connecticut, a fierce battle of words and opinions raged in the 18^th century between two sides, called the Old Light and the New Light. The conflict begins in the world of religion and soon spreads to that of politics. The established Congregational Church struggles to cope with what’s been called the Great Awakening, an incredible period of evangelical Christian activity. Those who wish to retain the older form of religious practice are dubbed Old Light, those promoting evangelical fervor come to be called New Light. In the words of colonial scholar Patricia Bonomi,

The majority of Connecticut ministers initially had welcomed the revival, but when evangelical excesses and separatist rumblings began to threaten both religious and civil peace, orthodox ministers joined an alarmed magistracy to uphold order. By aligning itself squarely with the orthodox churches, the Connecticut government not only exacerbated the religious split but gave it the added dimension of a political contest between “ins” and “outs.”

At the urging of Old Light ministers, the Connecticut legislature in 1742 and 1743 passed a remarkable series of law designed to suppress revivalist, or New Light, activity. A May 1742 “Act for regulating Abuses and correcting Disorders in Ecclesiastical Affairs” forbade uninvited ministers—from Connecticut and elsewhere, ordained and lay—to preach or exhort in neighboring parishes under pain of fines, loss of salary, or expulsion from the colony. This law was then invoked to deprive New Light ministers in West Haven, Lyme, and elsewhere of their pulpits, and to expel from the colony such itinerants as Samuel Finley and James Davenport. … Other laws passed in these years required legislative approval for any new seminary of learning (thereby suppressing the evangelical Shepherd’s Tent at New London), instituted an oath of religious orthodoxy for students and faculty at Yale, and barred the hiring of any minister who did not possess a college degree. In addition, marriages and baptisms performed by separatist preachers were disallowed, with some New Light ministers being jailed for officiating at weddings of their own church members….[3]

 

It can’t happen here? It has happened here!

Enter Thomas Jefferson, a few decades later. Jefferson is sometimes referred to as a Unitarian. He occasionally referred to himself as such. But Jefferson attended many different kinds of churches, as well as being a man of science and a self-trained Bible scholar. By the time of the Revolution, the evangelical enthusiasm of the Great Awakening had died down. Enlightenment rationalism was growing. Jefferson was certainly a leading light in this transformation, though as someone correctly pointed out last week, his skeptical attitude got him called an atheist in the 1800 presidential election.

Jefferson was convinced the new nation’s constitution should have a bill of rights, that guaranteed individual freedom of conscience, in religious as well as secular matters. While ambassador to France he wrote back to his friend James Madison, “A bill of rights, is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

Jefferson’s opinion prevailed and the Bill of Rights became law in 1791. The First Amendment begins,

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

Religion and state, after so many centuries of troubled marriage, were finally legally divorced, at least in the eyes of the national government of the new republic called the United States of America.

Jefferson was so scrupulous about the religious freedom he’d helped create he wrote the so-called, “Wall of Separation Letter” that was our traditional reading this morning. In it, Jefferson explains to a Connecticut church group why, as president, he won’t establish religious days of fasting and feasting.

Much has been read into that famous phrase from the letter, “a wall of separation between church and state.” It refers to the First Amendment rights regarding religion: that Congress won’t declare an official or preferred religion, and that it won’t interfere with how people choose to worship. It does not say that religious people, acting from religious conviction, may not put forth their opinions in the public square. What it does say is that the government can’t play favorites between religions.

The subject of the First Amendment is Congress, the lawmaker of the Federal Government. The full separation of church and state didn’t occur in many states for some time, in Massachusetts not till well into the 19^th century.

Once again, Unitarians were part of the action. Many Congregational churches in the first half of 1800’s Massachusetts split between Orthodox and Unitarian factions. One very important split regarded the church in Dedham. At the time, everyone in a community was counted as part of the local Congregational parish whether they attended the local Congregational church or not. You might well be a member of some other house of worship, but you would still have to support the state religion. The Dedham case was decided in court in 1820. The verdict was that the parish, that is, the community at large, had the right to have a say in the running of the church they supported through their taxes. The parish, that is everyone in a given location, tended to be more liberal than the members of the church. That meant that the Unitarians, following the Dedham decision, had the right to set up congregations of their own in former Congregationalist churches if that was the will of the public. The Standing Order of the established church was considerably weakened, though it would remain the official faith for some years.

Let’s flash forward to the present. It seems to me ironic that many of the spiritual descendents of the New Light churches of the 18^th century, that is, evangelical Christians, should be now be active in trying to lower the wall of separation. Back then, they’d been discriminated against, not even allowed to be married under the authority of their own churches. How familiar that feeling is to us today as we experience the denial of marriage equality for all couples! And that denial is maintained through governmental implementation of religious opinion. This continuing War on Some Couples can only be defended by appeals to narrow interpretations of scriptures that the state, according to the Bill of Rights, may hold no opinion on.

Similarly, the Religious Right’s other scarecrow, abortion. No one is for abortion. But should it be outlawed? Who decides? No one has ever shown a compelling reason that legal abortion harms the community. The objections to it are basically founded in religious opinion, which the government has no right to turn into law.

My friend Ed and I sometimes discuss how “the old time religion” of our childhoods has been morphing into the Christian Right. (He was raised Southern Baptist and I Mennonite). The “old time religion” was basically apolitical. It concerned itself with kindness towards others and devotion to a righteous life. It wasn’t obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. It didn’t try to take over school boards or urge foreign wars.

Ed and I agree that that old time religion has been hijacked by politically motivated people who have sought to align their religion with one political party and a dogmatic political agenda.

One thing to consider is that evangelical Christianity per se is not politically right. In fact, evangelicals in Europe are overwhelmingly moderate to liberal politically. And many evangelical Christians in this country strongly oppose the slide to the right.

American civil religion has also experienced a change of management. The so-called Mainline denominations have enjoyed a respected place in American society. More Episcopalians have been elected president than members of any other denomination. Unitarians, kind of a liberal adjunct to the Mainline churches, have contributed five presidents, if you count Jefferson. But the current president, though a Methodist, is far from Mainline. In fact, he’s personally the de facto leader of the Religious Right, and easily the most religiously vocal president in our history. He refused to even meet with the many church groups that opposed the attack on Iraq, including the National Council of Churches. Only one denomination took a stand for the war. It was the largest Protestant denomination and one of the most conservative, namely the Southern Baptist Convention.

There’s the Religious Right and then there’s the Religious Right. The most radical are the Restorationists, who wish to “restore” God’s rule, or their version of it, over America. Sometimes they’re also called Dominionists, from the passage in Genesis about humanity dominating the earth.

Christian Restorationists are a small but influential group. Sociologist William Martin writes of them,

 

Reconstructionist theologians, the most notable of whom are Rousas John Rushdoony, Gary North, Gary DeMar, and Greg Bahnsen, tend to be both prolific and voluminous authors and they do not always agree among themselves, but a sampling of their views provides some sense of how a reconstructed America might look. The federal government would play no role in regulating business, public education, or welfare. Indde, if it survived at all, its functions would likely be limited to delivering the mail and providing some measure of national defense. Some government would be visible at the level of counties, each of which would be protected by a fully armed militia, but citizens would be answerable to church authorities on most matters subject to regulation. Inheritance and gift taxes would be eliminated, income taxes would not exceed ten percent—the biblical title—and social security would disappear. Public schools would be abolished in favor of home-schooling arrangements, and families would operate on a strict patriarchal pattern. The only people permitted to vote would be members of “biblically correct” churches. Most notably, a theonomic order would make homosexuality, adultery, blasphemy, propagation of false doctrine, and incorrigible behavior by disobedient children subject to the death penalty, preferably administered by stoning….

 

Later, Martin goes on,

 

It is difficult to assess the influence of Reconstructionist thought with any accuracy. Because it is so genuinely radical, most leaders of the Religious Right are careful to distance themselves from it. At the same time, it clearly holds some appeal for many of them. One undoubtedly spoke for others when he said, Though we hide their books under the bed, we read them just the same.[4]

 

It should be noted that the Rev. Tim Lahey, who was influential in Bush’s rise to the White House was a framer of the Reconstructionist movement.

Whether it’s radical or more mainstream religious conservatism, the church state issues are more prominent now than at any time in recent history.

Should schoolchildren have to say “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Should the government give money to congregations for social programs? Should clergy be allowed to endorse candidates from the pulpit and retain their group’s tax-free status? These are all tremors on the San Andreas Fault of religion and state.

The Religious Right will have its work cut out in a 21^st century America where self-described Humanists are on the rise and Buddhism and Islam are among the fastest-growing religions.

What kind of America do we want? One where a single religion dominates and others are merely tolerated or even persecuted? Or one with real respect for conscience and diversity?

Unitarian sociologist/theologian James Luther Adams wrote in our contemporary reading about the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. We don’t all believe the same things as Unitarian Universalists, but we can agree on everyone’s right to practice the faith of his or her choice. We believe in the separation of church and state, but not in the separation of church and mind. Sometimes, deeply held religious conviction leads us to speak out, to come together, to let government know how we feel—all rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. But we also have a responsibility to see to it that government is fair to everyone, that only reasons that stand to reason in a secular context are fit to base law on.

George Orwell, in his classic novel, 1984, writes that the only thing that’s truly ours is the few cubic centimeters inside our skulls. Freedom of belief is not negotiable.

As we look at the state of religion and politics today, it can be easy to get depressed. But it’s far more useful to do something. I will leave you with the words of Marianne Williamson, from her 1997 book The Healing of America. Williamson writes,

America keeps trying to find the right drivers, when instead we should be questioning what road we’re on. Contrary to what we are told, the road ahead is not full of just light; the road ahead is full of consequences. But there is another road that America can take, the road we have always known that we belonged on. It is the road of high and enlightened purpose, a pursuit of the expansion of truth—in who it touches and how deeply. Material expansion will take care of itself if we take care of all things true and beautiful. For those whose hearts respond to this thought, it is time to break through the superstitious thinking that would have us believe it’s too late to change. We can change, we will change—in fact, we are changing. That is our destiny. A question that faces us is this: can we recreate politics to reflect these things, or must the pursuit of higher truth remain separate from the public sphere? This moment is one of opportunity for the creation of a new political forcefield. It is up to each and every one of us to decide where America goes now.[5]