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Pro-Faith Judges
…Established “official” churches survived in several states well into the nineteenth century. Connecticut disestablished its favored Congregational denomination only in 1818, New Hampshire in 1819, and Massachusetts in 1833 — some forty-five years after the adoption of the First Amendment. The changes reflected the religious “quickening” of the time (viewed by some as a second Great Awakening), with new sects and philosophies clamoring for recognition and fresh adherents. In any event, public opinion and legislative decisions, not judicial dictate, brought disestablishment.
The leading judges of the early Republic outspokenly endorsed governmental support for religious institutions. John Marshall, the father of American jurisprudence and for thirty-four epochal years (1801-35) the chief justice of the United States, wrote a revealing letter to Jasper Adams on May 9, 1833, declaring: “The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.”
His colleague on the Court (1796-1811), Justice Samuel Chase, wrote a 1799 opinion (Runkel v. Winemill) that held: “Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the pace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion, and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.”
The most authoritative explanation of the First Amendment came from Joseph Story, a Supreme Court justice from 1811 to 1845 (appointed by President Madison, the father of the Constitution) and, as a longtime Harvard professor, the leading early commentator on the Constitution. He observed:
The general if not universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation. The real object of the First Amendment… was to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.
None of today’s Christian conservative organizations seek to institute the “national ecclesiastical establishment” clearly prohibited by the Establishment Clause. The leading organizations on the Religious Right — Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, the American Family Association, the Traditional Values Coalition, and so forth — all represent interdenominational coalitions, drawing Catholics and Mormons, Episcopalians and evangelicals of every sort. Meanwhile, those who worry over Christian conservative influence clearly favor the folly described by Justice Story: a “state policy” to hold all religions “in utter indifference.” This effort to sever ties between faith and state — including the absurd efforts to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance or the motto “In God we trust” from our coinage — produces precisely the sort of “universal indignation” Justice Story predicted nearly two hundred years ago…
Rejecting the National Hymnal
…In the emotional days after the September 11 attacks, secular activists objected to performances of “God Bless America” or “God Bless the USA” in public schools, but their inability to suggest faith-free alternatives highlighted their alienation from the American mainstream. All our most revered nationalist songs emphasize the Republic’s special connection to the Almighty.
Our national anthem indicates that the idea of this relationship preceded today’s Religious Right by at least two hundred years. “The Star-Spangled Banner” includes Francis Scott Key’s incontrovertibly religious sentiments in its final verse:
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
The nation’s other most beloved patriotic hymn, “America the Beautiful,” features a chorus with the cherished line, “America! America! God shed His grace on thee.” Katharine Lee Bates began writing the words after reaching the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado in 1893 and entering a state of near-religious-ecstasy upon contemplation of the Great Plains to the east. She included verses that repeatedly ask assistance from the Almighty…
Meanwhile, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the stirring marching song of the War Between the States, isn’t merely religious (with its chorus invoking the biblical word hallelujah) but is also specifically Christian. The final, moving verse — most often sung in a reverent hush — poetically declares:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Finally, “America” (also known as “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”) provides no safe haven for those who yearn to disentangle religious and patriotic messages, not with its inescapably churchy concluding verse:
Our fathers’ God to Thee
Author of liberty
To Thee we sing
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light
Protect us by Thy might
Great God, our King.
The most recent of the popular patriotic melodies first appeared on the eve of World War II as a love letter to the nation from an immigrant boy who became the leading Broadway composer. Irving Berlin donated all proceeds from “God Bless America” to the Boy Scouts (another politically incorrect institution) and implored the Almighty to “stand beside her and guide her / Through the night with the light from above.”
Some contemporary Americans clearly feel uncomfortable with our long history of weaving together a sense of national identity with claims of divine mission, our consistent assumption that the Almighty has selected this nation for His purposes. These alarmed opponents of “theocracy” have every right to argue that we will enjoy a brighter, better future by severing the old association between faith and nationalism, but they shouldn’t mischaracterize the past — or suggest a return to an era of absolute church-state separation that never existed.
Michael Medved
“The Founders Intended a Secular, Not Christian, Nation”
The 10 Big Lies About America
