separation of church and state research paper

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The separation of church and state in the united states.

• Steven K. Green Steven K. Green Center for Religion, Law and Democracy, Willamette University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.29
• Published online: 02 December 2014

Separation of church and state has long been viewed as a cornerstone of American democracy. At the same time, the concept has remained highly controversial in the popular culture and law. Much of the debate over the application and meaning of the phrase focuses on its historical antecedents. This article briefly examines the historical origins of the concept and its subsequent evolutions in the nineteenth century.

• Separation of church and state
• disestablishment
• religious liberty
• establishment of religion
• First Amendment

Religion and Government are certainly very different Things, instituted for different Ends; the design of one being to promote our temporal Happiness; the design of the other to procure the Favour of God, and thereby the Salvation of our Souls. While these are kept distinct and apart, the Peace and welfare of Society is preserved, and the Ends of both are answered. By mixing them together, feuds, animosities and persecutions have been raised, which have deluged the World in Blood, and disgraced human Nature. 1

John Dickinson, one of the Founding Fathers, wrote the above statement in 1768 on the advent of the American Revolution. As a Pennsylvanian, Dickinson was not criticizing his colony’s religious establishment (there was none); rather he was commenting on one of the rising issues of the day: the proper relationship between religion and government in a society that increasingly identified with the principles of natural rights and rationalism originating in the Enlightenment. The immediate context was a controversy over a proposal to appoint the first American bishop of the Church of England, the presumptive established church for the British American colonies. At the time, religious establishments—that is, government support for “public ministers” and houses of worship through forced taxation or “assessments”—existed in nine of the thirteen colonies, but the Anglican Church was only dominant in four southern colonies. Colonialists living in the remaining colonies—those residing in colonies without establishments as well as those in colonies with “multiple” establishments that favored dissenting sects such as Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Dutch Reformed—feared that a domestic Anglican bishop would not only increase the power of the Anglican Church at the expense of other Protestant bodies, but also would threaten the civil and religious liberties that the colonialists had grown to expect over 150 years of benign neglect.

Even before the political crisis arose in 1765 , these Americans overwhelmingly identified with the opposition Whigs in England, who criticized the corruption and authoritarianism of the established church. As patriots raised claims of political liberty in those formative years, matters of religious liberty and conscience were also on their minds. 2

Scholars of American religion have long debated whether and to what extent religion served as an “energizing propulsion” for the American Revolution and informed the political principles that underlie the nation’s founding documents. Unquestioningly, however, matters of religious liberty were of great concern to the founding generation, though they were secondary to the more pressing issues of military success and national unity. As the new states organized their governments and experimented with various models of representative democracy, they also addressed questions about the appropriate relationship between religion and government. The change that transpired over a short period was truly remarkable. In fifteen years, after the onset of the American Revolution, the number of religious establishments was effectively reversed with ten of fourteen states (now including Vermont) either disbanding their establishments or declining to enact legislation to support their previous systems. Most states also liberalized rules that had imposed political disabilities (e.g., public office holding) on dissenting groups. At the national level, the authors of the Constitution inserted a ban on any religious test for public office holding, while the First Congress drafted a constitutional amendment prohibiting a religious establishment and protecting the free exercise of religion. By the time the last state (Massachusetts) disestablished in 1833 , a phrase had arisen to represent the distinctly American pattern of church-state relations: separation of church and state. 3

Separation of church and state has been part of the nation’s legal and cultural nomenclature since the early 1800s. Judges, politicians, educators, and even religious leaders have embraced church-state separation as central to church-state relations and a cornerstone of American democracy. The Supreme Court first employed the term “separation of church and state” in 1879 as shorthand for the meaning of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, stating “it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment.” To this day, most Americans support the principle of church-state separation as one of the hallmarks of American government. Although the phrase is not found in the Constitution, no organizing theory has had a greater impact on the way Americans conceptualize the intersection of religion, culture, and politics than the principle of church-state separation. 4

Despite its inclusion in the pantheon of democratic virtues, separation of church and state did not become constitutional canon until the mid-twentieth century with incorporation of the Bill of Right to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In the modern Court’s first Establishment Clause holding, Everson v. Board of Education ( 1947 ), Justice Hugo Black wrote:

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 […] 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 […] 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.” 5

For approximately fifty years, separation of church and state was the touchstone for church-state jurisprudence, endorsed by liberal and conservative justices alike. Particularly in the earlier years, justices opined that the separation must be “absolute,” “uncompromising,” “high and impregnable,” and “complete and permanent,” although the rhetoric was usually more absolute than the ultimate holdings. (In fact, in Everson , the Court upheld the state reimbursement of transportation expenses for children to attend parochial schools.) While some judges and lawyers may have disagreed with the Court’s rhetoric, few contested the underlying principle. 6

The pedigree of separation of church and state says little about its content, however. Like judges, many Americans have disagreed about what the principle means in practice. For some, it means that religious bodies have no official status or formal role in the government, such that each institution acts independently of the other. The government may not maintain a state religion, directly finance religious activities, or coerce actions either on behalf of or against religion. Beyond these core prohibitions, however, the government has significant leeway to interact with religion: it may acknowledge religious traditions and customs, use religious symbols and discourse in ecumenical ways, and financially assist activities of religious bodies that advance the commonweal. The Constitution does not prohibit communal expressions of faith, such as prayers in legislative halls or on public school football fields. This view also permits the government to facilitate private religious activity as a means of enhancing the religious liberty right contained in the Free Exercise Clause. Here, separationism becomes the rationale for protecting the independence of religious institutions, such as by preventing civil courts from adjudicating internal church disputes and affording religious bodies broad discretion over employment matters. Under this perspective, the superior value inherent in “separation” is the goal of minimizing government interference with religious actions and choices. One could term this a minimalist view of church-state separation. 7

The more familiar understanding of separation of church and state, however, has been the so-called “strict separationist” position, represented in the above language from the Everson decision. This perspective is weighted toward the nonestablishment side of the religion clauses, and it advocates a broader understanding of separation to ensure that all government functions remain secular. The government may not encourage religious fealty, support religious institutions financially or otherwise, or use religious means to accomplish public policy. In practical terms, this has meant prohibiting public school–sponsored religious expression, disallowing government financial aid to religious schools and charities, prohibiting the government’s use of religious symbols and discourse, and reducing if not eliminating regulatory exemptions for religiously based conduct. From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, the Supreme Court adhered to the stricter separationist position, striking prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, barring most funding of parochial schools, and striking the government’s display of the Ten Commandments and other religious symbols. 8

A controversial tablet displaying the Ten Commandments, located on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, TX. Courtesy of the Office of the Texas Attorney General.

Criticism of the modern Court’s separationist approach has existed since the 1940s, but gained momentum as a result of the resurgence of conservatism during the 1980s and the appointment of constitutional conservatives to the Supreme Court. Today, it is not uncommon for religious, legal, and cultural conservatives to criticize the concept of church-state separation. Critics charge that a separationist perspective imposes a regime of secularism, one that is not neutral toward religious matters but that privatizes and marginalizes religion. Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter argued that the separationism promoted “a culture of disbelief,” while Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus claimed that it created a religiously “naked public square.” 9 Such critics have argued that a minimalist view of church-state separation is more consistent with our history, the intent of the framers of the First Amendment, and constitutional doctrine.

More recently, a group of scholars has challenged the historical bona fides of separationism, arguing that the concept was not only foreign to members of the founding generation, but also that it emerged in the nineteenth century as a means to maintain Protestant dominance at the expense of Catholics and other religious minorities. In this telling, church-state separation is a profane and illiberal concept. 10 Even Supreme Court justices now criticize the doctrine, not just their predecessors’ interpretation of it. Now the church-state decisions do not include laudatory references to separation, and they often express open hostility to the concept. Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote: “There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was constitutionalized in [1947]. No amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true.” And more recently, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized lawyers for making allusions to the “so-called ‘wall of separation between church and state.’” Separation of church and state, it seems, remains controversial. 11

The Historical Antecedents of Church-State Separation

The idea of separating the functions and powers of the sacred and the profane reaches far back into Western history. In his writings in the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo distinguished the authority and duties of the sacred and temporal worlds. The ideas of church-state separation that were most influential during the founding period, however, can be traced chiefly to the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Whig politics. Arguments for disengaging secular authority from the church arose during the Reformation, largely in response to the arrangements that had arisen between the Catholic Church and various kingdoms. Much of this emphasis on separation was theologically based. John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion , wrote that the “spiritual kingdom” and the “political kingdom […] must always be considered separately,” due to the “difference and unlikeliness between ecclesiastical and civil power.” Yet, even though Protestant leaders such as Calvin and Martin Luther emphasized that the church and the state were distinct institutions with separate spheres, they viewed them as based in the same divine authority and engaging in complementary roles. The institutional distinction between church and state did not lead to disestablishment or any practical sense of separation. Only radical reformers such as the Anabaptists rejected the idea of religious establishments, with Anabaptist leader Menno Simons calling for a “separating wall” between the regenerate church and the corrupting world. 12

British and American Puritans also insisted on distinct civil and religious institutions, denying political authority to church leaders. But the Puritans did not foreswear formal establishments or the state support of religion, tying many of their civil laws to biblical mandates and maintaining a system of taxes to support religion. Public officials were to be “nursing fathers” of the regenerate church, reinforcing its mission. It fell to radical Separatist and some-time Baptist Roger Williams to make the most complete argument for church-state separation in early colonial America. In a famous passage, Williams argued for a “wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wilderness of the world.” Rhode Island, the colony established by Williams, rejected a religious establishment and enforced a high degree of separation between governmental and ecclesiastical institutions. (Quaker Pennsylvania also forswore a religious establishment, though it did not go as far as Rhode Island in rejecting any government role in reinforcing religious morality.) Although Williams is now viewed as a visionary, his influence at the time was limited; during the Revolutionary era, separationist Baptist Isaac Backus preferred to point to Pennsylvania as the model of religious liberty, instead of “irreligious” Rhode Island. 13

Many of the founders knew of this history, though it is less likely they were familiar with the writings of reformers like Roger Williams. Rather, the Founders’ ideas about church-state relations came principally from the works of Enlightenment and Whig writers. 14 John Locke, author of the highly influential Second Treatise on Government ( 1690 ) and A Letter Concerning Toleration ( 1689 ), refuted the doctrine of the divine right of kings and replaced it with a theory of a “social contract” by which people—the ultimate sources of authority—delegated to government the responsibility to create an ordered society. Locke’s theories stood in sharp contrast to the notion that secular law was subject to religious mandates. In his Letter Concerning Toleration , Locke wrote that “the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate […] [Thus] the civil power ought not to prescribe articles of faith or doctrines, or forms of worshipping God, by civil law.” Rather, “the whole power of civil government is concerned only with men’s civil goods, is confined to the care of the things of this world, and has nothing whatever to do with the world to come.” It is true that Locke did not dispute all forms of government support for religion or advocate disestablishing the Church of England. But Locke’s writings must be viewed within the context of their time when notions of religious toleration and a division of ecclesiastical and civil functions were in their nascent stages. Locke envisioned a situation which would restrict the influence of each on the other. The “bounds of the church” cannot “in any manner be extended to civil affairs,” Locke insisted, “because the church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth and civil affairs. The boundaries of both sides are fixed and immovable.” 15

Other influential Enlightenment works included Baron Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws ( 1748 ), which advocated toleration of religious belief and freedom of worship, and the writings of Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, who discounted the divinity of the scriptures and a religious basis of the law. Montesquieu and Bolingbroke were read by the founding generation, particularly Thomas Jefferson. 16 The works of the radical Whig philosophers, such as the authors of Cato’s Letters ( 1720–1723 ) John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, were also influential during the founding era. In addition to advocating freedom of conscience, Trenchard and Gordon spoke out against corruption in the Anglican Church. John Cartwright, Richard Price, and Joseph Priestly were later opposition writers who advocated for political and religious reform. Priestly, who corresponded with many of the founding generation before fleeing to America, called for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (which imposed a religious test for public officeholding) and disestablishment of the Church of England, insisting on an even greater separation of religious and secular realms. A final Whig writer particularly influential among many Founding Fathers was theorist James Burgh, author of Political Disquietations and Crito . Like other radical Whigs, Burgh spoke out against religious establishments, warning of “a church getting too much power into her hands, and turning religion into a mere state engine.” In Crito , Burgh called for building “an impenetrable wall of separation between things sacred and civil,” the likely source for Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists where he uses the same metaphor. Burgh’s fans and subscribers also included George Washington, John Adams, John Hancock, John Dickinson, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson, a veritable “who’s who” of the founding generation. 17

Because these writings were so popular among members of the founding generation, intellectual historians consider them central to political thought when revolutionary leaders began the process of creating republican states out of former British colonies. To be sure, other ideological strains influenced the founding generation, including classical republicanism, the common law, natural law, and even Protestant evangelical and Puritan covenantal thought. The Founders synthesized these seemingly disparate ideological strains into a comprehensive republicanism. No one during the founding generation argued in favor of increasing church-state ties, and only a small number advocated retaining the status quo of religious establishments. The point is that the Founders imbibed multiple sources that promoted various conceptions of religious toleration, freedom of conscience, disestablishment, and church-state separation. What was important to the Founders—and is important to modern efforts to understand the period—is that the ideas about church and state were dynamic and unfolding. Because of that fluid environment, it should not be surprising that few of the Founders offered a complete understanding of church-state arrangements. But most important, there was a clear progression in favor of greater separation. 18

The Separationist Impulse

Several factors support claims of a clear direction toward separation during the founding period. First, the American Revolution followed a period of religious experimentalism and expansion commonly called the First Great Awakening. Although known for its emotional revivals that challenged the staid religious practices of the established churches, the Great Awakening was equally significant for breaking down forces of religious uniformity and substituting notions of religious equality and volunteerism. Historians have documented how democratic ideas flowed into the religious movement and out again, undermining assumptions about the necessity of state supported religion. The Great Awakening cemented the notion that participation in, and support of, religious worship should be voluntary, not compulsory. 19

With the advent of the Revolution, New York and North Carolina quickly abolished their religious establishments, joining the ranks of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Granted, church establishments had never worked well in any of those former colonies (or had not worked at all), so disestablishment was not controversial. But none of these new states considered moving in the opposite direction toward increasing church-state ties, even though they were theoretically free to do so. Most disestablished states retained other practices inconsistent with a modern understanding of separation, such as religious requirements for holding public office and participating in legal proceedings (i.e., oaths), official acknowledgments of religion, and religiously based sumptuary laws (e.g., blasphemy and Sabbath laws). Nonetheless, all states had taken the first steps toward separation; before long many had abolished other religious disqualifications they had retained from the colonial era. For example, in 1786 Pennsylvania liberalized its religious requirements for public officeholding, and its constitution of 1790 omitted earlier references to “Almighty God” as the source for republican government. The clear trend was toward liberalizing religious disqualifications. 20

Initially, the remaining eight states retained or reauthorized their existing structures of religious assessments and legal preferences for Christianity. By the end of the Revolution, however, even the formal Anglican establishments in Virginia and South Carolina had given way to “multiple establishments” where a taxpayer could have his assessment paid to his own church or, as was common in New England, to that church chosen by the majority vote of the parish. But this description does not indicate the ongoing dynamism in those states. In 1786 , Virginia rejected a bill to allow tax assessments for religious worship, adopting in its stead Jefferson’s Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. By 1789 , four additional states had abandoned their religious establishments (or had neglected to fund them), thus allowing them to die. The first Georgia and Maryland Constitutions had allowed for religious assessments but neither state instituted a system. Maryland voters rejected a proposed assessment in 1785 , indicating a quick reversal of opinion, while a Georgia law of the same year apparently never went into effect. The new Georgia Constitutions of 1789 and 1798 , respectively, removed the religious test for officeholding and abolished all assessments. Although the 1778 South Carolina Constitution declared a “general establishment” of Protestantism, limiting church incorporation and public officeholding to Protestants, it inconsistently provided that no person could be compelled to support any religious body. As a result, South Carolina’s “establishment” amounted chiefly to a method of incorporating churches, and no church received public tax support. South Carolina’s Constitution of 1790 omitted the remaining reference to an establishment and removed earlier religious restrictions on public officeholding. Finally, Vermont in 1786 rewrote its constitution of 1777 , reaffirming that “no man ought, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience,” but now removing a previous contradictory provision requiring “support” of public worship. All of these developments reveal a progression of thought about the meaning of church-state separation and freedom of conscience at the state level. 21

To be sure, tepid religious establishments continued into the nineteenth century in three states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire). But even in those states, the idea of a religious establishment was not particularly popular, and opposition to tax assessments and religious preferences was strong and growing. Experiencing pressure from within and without, officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire denied they even had a religious establishment. John Adams referred to the Massachusetts arrangement as “a very slender one, hardly to be called an establishment,” 22 whereas New Hampshire Chief Justice Jedediah Smith declared in an 1803 decision that

a religious establishment is where the State prescribes a formulary of faith and worship for the rule and government of all the subjects. Here the State do [ sic ] neither. It is left to each town and parish, not to prescribe rules of faith or doctrine for the members of the corporation but barely to elect a teacher of religion and morality for the society, who is to be maintained at the expense of the whole. The privilege is extended to all denominations. There is no one in this respect superior or inferior to another. 23

And in commenting on the Connecticut establishment, jurist Zephaniah Swift wrote in 1791 that “every Christian may believe, worship, and support in such manner as he thinks right, and if he does not feel disposed to join public worship he may stay at home as he pleases without any inconvenience but the payment of his taxes to support public worship in the located society where he lives.” Smith denied that Connecticut maintained a religious establishment, which he associated with systems that favored one church exclusively. 24

By the final decade of the eighteenth century, however, the New England argument that nonpreferential establishments did not violate rights of conscience was losing ground to the more compelling arguments found in Jefferson’s Act for Establishing Religious Freedom and Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance , against Religious Assessments . Increasingly, early Americans believed that tax support of one religion or of religion generally violated rights of conscience. By the time of the writing of the Constitution, “the belief that government assistance to religion, especially in the form of taxes, violated religious liberty had a long history,” writes Thomas Curry. The movement away from religious assessments and toward expanding notions of rights of conscience demonstrates the transformation in attitudes about church-state arrangements. 25

Church-State Separation in the Nineteenth Century

Whether the prevailing regime is best represented by the Jeffersonian impulse of a “high wall of separation” or by a more accommodationist impulse that acknowledges the role of religion in public life through actions such as presidential proclamations of days of prayer and thanksgiving, there is little question that the separationist narrative runs into difficulties once one considers the nineteenth century. Indeed, the impetus toward achieving a more complete form of disestablishment foundered early in the next century. Attitudes about disengaging religious and temporal realms shifted as natural rights rationalism lost favor to a new Protestant evangelical ethos that came to dominate the nation culturally by the second third of the century. This attitudinal shift affected perspectives toward church-state relations.

Several factors contributed to this transformation in attitudes. First was the American reaction to the French Revolution and the subsequent decline in deistic thought in the United States. That reaction coincided with the wide-scale outbreak of evangelical revivals after 1800 , commonly called the Second Great Awakening. Spurred on by spiritual longing, frontier conditions, and the vacuum left by disestablishment, America entered a period of religious experimentation, what historian Jon Butler has termed a “spiritual hothouse” and what Shakers called a period of religious “democratization.” While many people experimented with heterodox forms of spirituality such as Mormonism, transcendentalism, and Mesmerism, the clear winners were Methodists and Baptists. Church membership tripled, and Protestant evangelicalism quickly became the dominant cultural expression in America, fueled by a post-millennialist eschatology (which taught that the Second Coming of Jesus would occur at the conclusion of a thousand-year golden reign). Society was, in a sense, perfectible, and America would be at the vanguard of bringing about Christ’s Kingdom. To facilitate the Second Coming, evangelical leaders created voluntary organizations designed to reform society by addressing issues such as intemperance, biblical illiteracy, and Sabbath observance. Evangelical leader Lyman Beecher believed that moral reform assisted the government by ensuring public piety. Reform societies would “constitute a sort of moral militia, prepared to act upon every emergency, and repel every encroachment upon the liberties and morals of the State,” Beecher insisted. “In a free government, moral suasion and coercion must be united.” These efforts brought reunited civil and religious functions in America. Even though this engagement now operated on an informal level, not officially, the middle third of the nineteenth century (more than the colonial period) was truly a “Protestant Ages,” the historian Robert T. Handy has noted. 26

As part of this transformation, evangelicals redefined popular and legal understandings of disestablishment. Early historians had already begun reevaluating the nation’s founding, identifying the hand of Providence in American history, sanctifying its leaders (particularly George Washington, the “American Moses”) and their accomplishments (e.g., the Constitution). Evangelical historians joined in this revisionism, helping to construct, in Jon Butler’s words, “a myth of the American Christian past.” Evangelical writers claimed that the nation’s Founders had not sought to disassociate religion from the state; rather, they sought to avoid rivalry among Protestant denominations while ensuring that America remained a “Christian nation” through government patronage of a general Protestantism. 27 In a widely circulated 1832 sermon, the Reverend Jasper Adams claimed that Christianity “was intended by [the Founders] to be the corner stone of the social and political structures which they were founding.” Adams concluded that “the people of the United states have retained the Christian religion as the foundation of their civil, legal and political institutions.” This new interpretation soon dominated popular attitudes. 28

A final factor that contributed to the attitudinal shift involved the legal community. Many judges of the antebellum period shared the emerging evangelical perspective. These judges enforced laws prohibiting blasphemy and Sunday activities based on religious grounds while declaring that “Christianity formed part of the common law.” This belief in the Christian nature of America affected interpretations of constitutional provisions as well. In 1824 , the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a claim that blasphemy laws violated the religious liberty provisions of the state constitution. While declaring that “complete liberty of conscience” existed in the state, the court also explained that “no free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.” 29

The most complete example of this view is found in Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s 1833 treatise on constitutional law:

The real object of the [First] amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity: but 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. 30

For Story and others, the government could advance Christianity generally to the exclusion of other religions. “It is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity as a divine revelation to doubt that it is the especial duty of government to foster and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects,” Story declared. 31

These factors have led most modern scholars to assert that the model for church-state separation during the nineteenth century more closely tracked the minimalist approach discussed above. Public acknowledgments of religion were commonplace. When church-state separation did arise, according to Philip Hamburger, it was used to justify Protestant dominance over public institutions—particularly public schooling and its funding source—at the expense of Catholics and other immigrants. Church-state separation prohibited the funding of Catholic parochial schools and readings from the Catholic Douay Bible, but not the “nonsectarian” Protestant exercises in the public schools. This truncated understanding of separation during the nineteenth century can also be seen in the federal government’s punishment of the Mormon polygamists and support for efforts by missionaries to Christianize Native Americans.

On the positive side, the Supreme Court relied on the notion of church-state separation to restrict civil courts from adjudicating internal theological disputes of church bodies. In many respects, however, separation of church and state during the nineteenth century more closely tracked Justice Story’s description than it did the ideal advanced by Jefferson and Madison. 32

That said, it is wrong to view nineteenth-century attitudes toward church-state matters as static. Prosecutions for blasphemy petered out after the 1830s, and Sunday law enforcement declined as the century progressed. By the last quarter of the century, judges generally rejected arguments that courts were obligated to uphold behavioral laws on religious grounds. In public education, the notion of nonsectarian instruction went through several stages, with many school districts minimizing the religious content of the exercises in response to complaints by Catholics, Jews, and other religious minorities. A handful of state courts even struck down the religious exercises as being inconsistent with separation of church and state. By late century, many Protestant leaders complained that public schools were being “secularized.” In contrast, a growing number of educators, intellectuals, and freethinkers commended the changes to public education, calling for a more rigorous application of church-state separation. Like the founding period, therefore, the nineteenth century was a dynamic period for church-state development. 33

Thus when the Supreme Court became engaged in church-state controversies in the mid-twentieth century, it could draw on various models of church-state relations. In choosing the more separationist paradigm, the modern Court did not create new law; rather, it built on an evolving tradition, one with a long legacy. While the debate continues over which model is more historically accurate, the idea of separation of church and state remains a core concept in the American experience.

Further Reading

• Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America . New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
• Buckley, Thomas E. Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
• Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• Byrd, James P. Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution . New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Curry, Thomas J. The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment . New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
• Davis, Derek H. Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation of Church and State . New York: New York University Press, 2002.
• Gaustad, Edwin S. Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America . Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991.
• Green, Steven K. The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth Century America . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Hamburger, Philip . Separation of Church and State . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Handy, Robert T. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
• Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
• Lambert, Frank . The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Marty, Martin E. Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance . Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
• McGarvie, Mark Douglas . One Nation under Law: America’s Early National Struggles to Separate Church and State. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004.
• Sehat, David . The Myth of American Religious Freedom . New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

1. John Dickinson , Pennsylvania Journal , May 12, 1768, reprinted in The Founders on Religion , ed. James H. Huston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 60–61.

2. Carl Bridenbaugh , Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1689–1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) ; Patricia U. Bonomi , Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) .

3. Thomas J. Curry , The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), passim ; Steven K. Green , The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 31–77.

4. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879); Mariana Servin-Gonzalez and Oscar Torres-Reyna , “The Polls-Trends: Religion and Politics,” Public Opinion Quarterly 63 (Winter 1999): 592–621, 603.

5. Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 15–16 (1947).

6. Everson, 330 U.S. at 1; McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948); Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952).

7. See Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987).

8. See Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963); Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992); Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971); Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373 (1985); Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980).

9. Stephen L. Carter , The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (New York: Basic Books, 1993) ; Richard John Neuhaus , The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1984) .

10. Philip Hamburger , Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) ; Daniel L. Dreisbach , Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation of Church and State (New York: New York University Press, 2002) .

11. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460 (2009).

12. St. Augustine, City of God (410–426 CE), and Martin Luther, Works (1523 CE), in The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding , ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 16, 19–21; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , in The Founders’ Constitution , ed. Philip Kurland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 5:1; Douglas Laycock , “The Many Meanings of Separation,” University of Chicago Law Review 70 (2003): 1667–1701 ; John Witte Jr. , Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment , 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2005) .

13. Laycock, “The Many Meanings of Separation,” 1687–92; Edwin S. Gaustad , Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 38–44 ; Edmund S. Morgan , Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 86–141 ; William G. McLoughlin , Soul Liberty: The Baptists’ Struggle in New England, 1630–1833 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, (1991), 257–258 .

14. See Bernard Bailyn , The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 26–30, 34–45. “More directly influential in shaping thought of the Revolutionary generation than classical writers," Bailyn writes, "were the ideas and attitudes associated with the writings of Enlightenment rationalism (26) .

15. Sanford Kessler , “Locke’s Influence on Jefferson’s ‘Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,’” Journal of Church 2nd State 25 (1983): 231 ; John Locke , Two Treatises of Government , ed. Peter Laslett (New York: New American Library, 1965), 408–12; John Locke, A Letter on Toleration , ed. Raymond Klibansky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 67–71, 85 ; Kermit L. Hall , The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (New York: Oxford University Press,1989), 57–58 .

16. See Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748), in Founders’ Constitution , 5:12; Bailyn, Ideological Origins , 27–29; Gordon S. Wood , The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 152–153 ; Allen Jayne , Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998), 19–40 .

17. Bailyn, Ideological Origins , 35–54; Wood, Creation of the American Republic , 291–305; Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore , The Godless Constitution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 80–82 . Carla H. Hay , James Burgh: Spokesman for Reform in Hanoverian England (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), 42–43 ; Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin , “James Burgh and American Revolutionary Theory,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 73 (1961): 38–57 ; James Burgh , Crito, or Essays on Various Subjects , 2 vols. (London, Dodsley, Becket, and de Hondt, 1766, 1767), 1:7, 2:119 .

18. Bailyn, Ideological Origins , 22–54; Wood, Creation of the American Republic , 1–124. The leading exception being the orthodox Congregationalist Timothy Dwight, later president of Yale College. See Timothy Dwight, The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis (1798), in Ellis Sandoz , Political Sermons of the American Founding Era (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), 1363–94 ; Green, The Second Disestablishment , 31–51.

19. See Sidney E. Mead , The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 16–43 ; Jon Butler , Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 164–224 ; Nathan O. Hatch , The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) .

20. See J. William Frost , A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 60–78 (noting that after a restrictive trend during the Revolutionary War with the enforcement of religious behavioral laws, Pennsylvania adopted a constitution in 1790 that was quite “radical” on issues of disestablishment and toleration.); “William Penn, Essay 2” in Herbert J. Storing , The Complete Anti-Federalist , Vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 171–75 : “[W]e find it declared in every one of our [state] bill of rights, ‘that there shall be a perfect liberty of conscience, and that no sect shall ever be entitled to a preference over the others.’ Yet in Massachusetts and Maryland, all the officers of government, and in Pennsylvania the members of the legislature, are to be of the Christian religion; in New-Jersey, North-Carolina, and Georgia, the protestant, and in Delaware, the Trinitarian sects, have exclusive right to public employments; and in South-Carolina the constitution goes so far as to declare the creed of the established church. Virginia and New-York are the only states where there is a perfect liberty of conscience.” Benjamin Rush to Richard Price, April 22, 1786, in Founders’ Constitution , 4:636.

21. See "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom” (1785) in Founders’ Constitution , vol. 5:84; Francis Newton Thorpe , ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the United . . . States of America (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909), 789, 800–801, 3255–56, 3664, 3752 ; Curry, First Freedoms , 135–89; Leonard Williams Levy , The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 47–51 ; Thomas E. Buckley , Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977), 144–72 ; William G. McLoughlin , New England Dissent, 1630–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 2:800–801 .

22. Curry, First Freedoms , 162–92; McLoughlin, New England Dissent , 2:610–11; Isaac Backus, A History of New England, 1774–1775 , in Founders’ Constitution , vol. 5:65.

23. Muzzy v. Wilkins, 1 Smith’s N.H. 1, 9 (1803).

24. Zephaniah Swift , A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut , Vol. 1 (Windham, CT: Author, 1795), 146 , Levy, Establishment Clause , 42–43; Curry, First Freedoms , 172–75.

25. James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance , ¶¶ 3 and 4 (arguing that enforced assessments violates rights of conscience); Vermont Constitution of 1786, chap. 1, art. 3: “[T]hat no man ought, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience.” Curry, First Freedoms , 217.

26. Robert T. Handy , A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities , 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 24–56 ; Lyman Beecher , “A Reformation of Morals Practicable and Indispensable,” in Lyman Beecher and the Reform of Society: Four Sermons, 1804–1828 , ed. Edwin S. Gaustad (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 17–19 ; Robert T. Handy , “The Protestant Quest for a Christian America, 1830–1930,” Church History 22 (1953): 8–20, 12 .

27. Robert Baird , Religion in the United States of America (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1844) ; Stephen Colwell , The Position of Christianity in the United States (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854) ; B. F. Morris , Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864) ; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith , 285.

28. Jasper Adams , The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States (Charleston, SC: A. E. Miller, 1833), 12–13 .

29. Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 Serg. & Rawl. 394, 406–407 (Pa. 1824); People v. Ruggles, 8 Johns. 290, 295–96 (N.Y. 1811).

30. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Co., 1833), § 1877 .

31. Commentaries § 1871.

32. Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1872).

33. Green, The Second Disestablishment ; Steven K. Green , The Bible, the School, and the Constitution: The Clash That Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) .

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Constitutional Expert On ‘Separation Of Church And State’: Framers Said Nothing Wrong With Religion In Culture

• Charles Creitz

• Michael W. McConnell
• Stanford Constitutional Law Center

The phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers saw nothing wrong with having religion in American culture, according to an expert.

While Congress is prohibited from enacting a state religion, the founding document says nothing about banishing religion from the public square, Professor Michael McConnell told Mark Levin on “Life, Liberty & Levin.”

“The words ‘separation of church and state’ are not in the Constitution… I think this is a shorthand version of what the establishment clause means,” he added, noting the passage in the Constitution that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“It does have a deep history because there were, in the 18th century, prominent writers who openly advocated for a union between church and state. There’s actually a famous essay by one of the Bishops in the Church of England by that very title.

“And, our framers did not did not believe in a union between church and state.”

The Stanford law professor continued, adding the founders instead wanted to protect against government “control” of religion and that they did not object to symbols of faith being present in the public square.

“This did not mean that the framers believed that the American people should be any less religious than they choose to be,” he said.

“It didn’t mean that the culture — that there was anything wrong with having religious elements in the culture. What it meant is that we would not have a system in which the government was able to tell us what to believe, was able to control churches, decide what their doctrines, decide who their personnel would be, and so forth.”

McConnell noted the Supreme Court rules on cases challenging the paradigm from time to time.

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Separation of church and state, american exceptionalism, and the contemporary social moment: viewing church–state separation from the priority of slavery.

1. Introduction

2. the varieties of establishment and disestablishment, 3. a false start: declining profits as explanans of british abolition, 4. “this free, christian country”: abolition and establishment in great britain, 4.1. early critiques of english slavery: anglican traditionalists against “slaves to gold” in the rising merchant class, 4.2. granville sharp, english civil law, and the beginning of national antislavery, 4.3. after somerset: british national identity and protestant liberty, 5. the role of church–state union in comparison to antebellum southern disestablishment, 5.1. the irreligious early south.

Unhappiness with Anglicanism antedated colonial settlement, and the minds and hearts of many Englishmen who immigrated to the colonies had turned or were turning away from it as a source of spiritual guidance and ecclesiastical authority. The trend that had already started in England was only increased and made more dramatic by the impact of the local colonial environment. The pioneer found a vacant new land within which he began to build; and in his zeal for change and expectations of a new destiny, hereditary authority was suspect. Material and institutional developments were products of his own handiwork. Having escaped from the framework of English society, the immigrant would not build it again in its entirety. The pull of the colonial climate of opinion made complete identification with the religious establishment as it existed in England with its taxes, tithes fees, and compliance with the dictates of its leading ecclesiastical statesmen impossible in the colonial communities unless rigorously backed by the power of the state. ( Clifton 1970, p. 49 )

Amidst the more free-wheeling environment of the colonial parishes the church’s traditions, system of government, and institutional demands seemed archaic, out of place, and frequently irrelevant. Indeed religion in seventeenth and eighteenth-century America underwent changes which broke with traditions on a scale reminiscent of the great Protestant schism of the sixteenth century. ( Clifton 1970, p. 48 )

5.2. Slavery Acknowledged as Wretched in the Early South

Slavery is not a national evil; on the contrary, it is a national benefit. The agricultural wealth of the country is found in those states owning slaves, and a great portion of the revenue of the government is derived from the products of slave labor—Slavery exists in some form everywhere, and it is not of much consequence in a philosophical point of view. (quoted in Tise 1987, p. 97 )

[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. ( Dred Scott v. Sandford , 60 U.S. 393 [1857])

5.3. The Failure of Christian Abolition

5.4. the resulting dominance of the “spirituality of the church” and church–state separationism, 5.5. avoiding misunderstanding: levels of early southern disestablishment; the late arrival of slavery as a positive good; and secessionist calls for a church–state union, 5.6. a study in contrasts: the insights of frederick douglass.

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that which occurred in England, where the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God…The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-Church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting the movement. (Douglass 1852 quoted in Bridges 2008, p. 251 )

6. Conclusions

Institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest, legal cases  , other sources  .

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Share and Cite

Prud'homme, J. Separation of Church and State, American Exceptionalism, and the Contemporary Social Moment: Viewing Church–State Separation from the Priority of Slavery. Religions 2021 , 12 , 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12010034

Prud'homme J. Separation of Church and State, American Exceptionalism, and the Contemporary Social Moment: Viewing Church–State Separation from the Priority of Slavery. Religions . 2021; 12(1):34. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12010034

Prud'homme, Joseph. 2021. "Separation of Church and State, American Exceptionalism, and the Contemporary Social Moment: Viewing Church–State Separation from the Priority of Slavery" Religions 12, no. 1: 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12010034

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Home » Articles » Topic » Legal Terms and Concepts » Legal Terms and Concepts Related to Religion » Establishment Clause: Separation of Church and State

Establishment Clause: Separation of Church and State

Written by Hana M. Ryman and J. Mark Alcorn and updated by Encyclopedia Staff, published on October 17, 2023 , last updated on July 1, 2024

Vashti McCollum sits outside the Supreme Court building in 1947, while awaiting arguments before the court on her fight to ban religious education classes from an Illinois public school. Her case was one of the cases in which the Supreme Court began to interpret the First Amendment's religious establishment clause known as "separation of church and state." (AP Photo/Herbert K. White. Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press)

The first clause in the  Bill of Rights  states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Establishment clause of First Amendment often interpreted to require separation of church and state

For approximately the first 150 years of the country’s existence, there was little debate over the meaning of this clause in the Constitution. As the citizenry became more diverse, however, challenges arose to existing laws and practices, and eventually, the Supreme Court was called upon to determine the meaning of the establishment clause.

Though not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the clause is often interpreted to mean that the Constitution requires the separation of church and state.

‘Separation of church and state’ metaphor rooted in early American fears of government involvement

Roger Williams , founder of Rhode Island, was the first public official to use this metaphor. He opined that an authentic Christian church would be possible only if there was “a wall or hedge of separation” between the “wilderness of the world” and “the garden of the church.” Williams believed that any government involvement in the church would corrupt the church.

The most  famous use of the metaphor  was by  Thomas Jefferson  in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. In it, Jefferson declared that when the American people adopted the establishment clause they built a “ wall of separation  between the church and state.”

Jefferson had earlier witnessed the turmoil of the American colonists as they struggled to combine governance with religious expression. Some colonies experimented with religious freedom while  others strongly supported an established church .

Thomas Jefferson created the most famous use of the metaphor “separation of church and state” in a letter where he mentioned a “wall of separation.” (Image via White House Historical Association, painted by Rembrandt Peale in 1800, public domain)

Jefferson fought to disestablish Anglican church in Virginia colony

One of the decisive battlegrounds for disestablishment was Jefferson’s colony of Virginia, where the Anglican Church had long been the established church.

Both Jefferson and fellow Virginian  James Madison  felt that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty. The two were aided in their  fight for disestablishment  by the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other “dissenting” faiths of Anglican Virginia.

During the debates surrounding both its writing and its ratification, many religious groups feared that the Constitution offered an insufficient guarantee of the civil and religious rights of citizens. To help win ratification, Madison proposed a bill of rights that would include religious liberty.

As presidents, though, both Jefferson and Madison could be accused of mixing religion and government. Madison issued proclamations of religious fasting and thanksgivings while Jefferson signed treaties that sent religious ministers to the Native Americans. And from its inception, the Supreme Court has opened each of its sessions with the cry “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

Public school religion cases allow Supreme Court to define establishment clause protection

It was not until after  World War II  that the Court interpreted the meaning of the establishment clause.

In  Everson v. Board of Education  (1947), the Court held that the establishment clause is one of the liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, making it applicable to state laws and local ordinances. Since then the Court has attempted to discern the precise nature of the separation of church and state.

In 1971 the Court considered the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute that provided financial support to nonpublic schools for teacher salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects and a Rhode Island statute that provided direct supplemental salary payments to teachers in nonpublic elementary schools.

The Schempp family, pictured here, brought suit that led to a 1963 ruling by the Supreme Court in Abington School District v. Schempp that banned bible reading and the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer in public schools, saying that it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause requiring separation of church and state. (AP Photo/John F. Urwiller, used with permission from The Associated Press.)

Lemon test developed to vet laws dealing with religious establishment

In  Lemon v. Kurtzman  (1971), the Court established a three-pronged test for laws dealing with religious establishment. To be constitutional a statute must have “a secular legislative purpose,” it must have principal effects that neither advance nor inhibit religion, and it must not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.”

The Court modified the Lemon test  in  Agostini v. Felton  (1997) by combining the last two elements, leaving a “purpose” prong and a modified “effects” prong.

In  County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union  (1989), a group of justices led by Justice  Anthony M. Kennedy  in his dissent developed a  coercion test : The government does not violate the establishment clause unless it provides direct aid to religion in a way that would tend to establish a state church or involve citizens in religion against their will.

Endorsement test used in cases involving religious displays on public property

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor  proposed  an endorsement test  that asks whether a particular government action amounts to an endorsement of religion.

In  Lynch v. Donnelly  (1984), O’Connor noted that the establishment clause prohibits the government from making adherence to a religion relevant to a person’s standing in the political community. Her fundamental concern was whether government action conveyed a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders. The endorsement test is often invoked in  religious display cases .

In  McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union  (2005), the Court ruled that the display of the  Ten Commandments  in two Kentucky courtrooms was unconstitutional but refused in the companion case,  Van Orden v. Perry (2005), to require the removal of a long-standing monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol.

David Harlow, left, and Michael Stys, view the Ten Commandments monument on display at the State Judicial Building in Alabama in 2002. A U.S. District Court ruled that placing the monument in the state building was a violation of the separation of church and state. (AP Photo/Dave Martin. Used with permission from The Associated Press)

Court says in neutrality test that government must treat religous groups the same

Questions involving appropriate use of government funds are increasingly subject to  the neutrality test , which requires the government to treat religious groups the same as it would any other similarly situated group.

In a test of Ohio’s  school voucher program , the Court held 5-4 in  Zelman v. Simmons-Harris  (2002) that Ohio’s program is part of the state’s general, neutral undertaking to provide educational opportunities to children and does not violate the establishment clause. In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice  William H. Rehnquist  wrote that the “Ohio program is entirely neutral with respect to religion.”

More recently, in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in  Carson v. Makin   that Maine could not exclude families who send their children to religious schools from its state-funded tuition reimbursement program. The program helped children who live in rural areas without public schools nearby, but said the tuition could not be used for religious schools. The court, in a ruling written by Justice John Roberts Jr., said that the policy violated the parents’ right to freely exercise their religion and that a public benefit that flowed to a religious school based on a parent’s choice did not “offend” the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Supreme Court declares in 2022 it has abandoned the Lemon test

Most significantly in 2022, the Supreme Court marked a change in how it will interpret Establishment Clause cases going forward. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District , the high court declared it had abandoned the Lemon test and instead, will interpret the Establishment Clause in “reference to historical practices and understandings.” In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that that the lower courts had created a “vice between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the other,” a conflict he associated with the Lemon test. Instead, he viewed the establishment and free exercise clauses as complementary and working together to decrease unnecessary government interference with religion. 

From the colonial era to the present, religions and religious beliefs have played a significant role in the political life of the United States. Religion has been at the core of some of the best and worst movements in the country’s history. As religious diversity continues to grow, concerns about separation of church and state are likely to continue.

This article was originally published in 2009. J. Mark Alcorn is a high school and college history instructor in Minnesota. Hana M. Ryman is a Middle School Humanities Educator in Orlando, Florida.

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This chapter reviews the idea that the separation of church and state retains a powerful resiliency, which is likely due to the phrase having been long associated with the Constitution of the United States and representing a particular cultural ordering that is quintessentially American. The chapter explains the resiliency of separation of church and state, which is the inherent indeterminacy of the concept. Church–state separation has declined as a legal rule and cultural construct, which is due to the modern Supreme Court's initial identification of separationism with secularism. The chapter looks back at how separationism became an easy target for political and religious conservatives to demonstrate a hostility toward religion among people with secularist leanings. It addresses the question of whether the Court will extend a protective notion of separationism to include religiously affiliated entities that serve the public or even private businesses operated pursuant to the owner's religious beliefs.

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• In U.S., Far More Support Than Oppose Separation of Church and State

But there are pockets of support for increased church-state integration, more Christianity in public life

Table of contents.

• Detailed tables
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this survey to help gauge Americans’ views on the relationship between church and state. For this report, we surveyed 12,055 U.S. adults from March 1 to 7, 2021. All respondents to the survey are part of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. For more, see the ATP’s methodology and the methodology for this report.

The questions used in this report can be found here .

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that the country shall have no official religion. At the same time, Christians continue to make up a large majority of U.S. adults – despite some rapid decline in recent years – and historians , politicians and religious leaders continue to debate the role of religion in the founders’ vision and of Christianity in the nation’s identity.

Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country, according to a March 2021 Pew Research Center survey. For instance, three-in-ten say public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, a practice that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional. Roughly one-in-five say that the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state (19%) and that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God (18%). And 15% go as far as to say the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

On the other hand, however, the clear majority of Americans do not accept these views. For example, two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say the Constitution was written by humans and reflects their vision, not necessarily God’s vision. And a similar share (69%) says the government should never declare any official religion. (Respondents were offered the opportunity to reply “neither/no opinion” in response to each question, and substantial shares chose this option or declined to answer in response to all of these questions, suggesting some ambivalence among a segment of the population.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey finds that Christians are much more likely than Jewish or religiously unaffiliated Americans to express support for the integration of church and state, with White evangelical Protestants foremost among Christian subgroups in this area. In addition, Christians who are highly religious are especially likely to say, for example, that the Constitution was inspired by God. But even among White evangelical Protestants and highly religious Christians, fewer than half say the U.S. should abandon its adherence to the separation of church and state (34% and 31%, respectively) or declare the country a Christian nation (35% and 29%).

Politics also is a major factor. Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party are far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to want to secure an official place for Christianity in the national identity. However, for the most part, Republicans do not directly voice a preference for the integration of church and state. For instance, 58% of Republicans and Republican leaners say the federal government should never declare any religion as the official religion of the United States, while a quarter of Republicans (26%) say that the government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation. By comparison, among Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party, 80% say the government should never declare any official religion, and just 6% want the government to declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

While the above-average level of support for an overtly Christian government among Republicans and White evangelical Protestants may come as no surprise to close observers of American politics, some of the other patterns in the survey are perhaps more unexpected. For example, many Black and Hispanic Americans – groups that are heavily Democratic – are highly religious Christians, and on several of the questions in the survey, they are just as likely as White Americans, if not more likely, to say they see a special link between Christianity and America.

Nearly four-in-ten Black Americans (38%) say public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in Christian prayers, somewhat higher than the 31% of White Americans who say this. And about one-in-five U.S. Hispanics (22%) say the federal government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state, roughly on par with the 19% of White Americans who say this.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 1-7, 2021, among 12,055 U.S. adults on the Center’s online, nationally representative American Trends Panel (ATP). These questions about the relationship between church and state can be combined into a scale that sorts respondents into one of four categories – “Church-state integrationists” (who say they would favor the intermingling of religion with government and public life); “church-state separationists” (who favor a wall of separation between religion and state); those who express “mixed” views about these matters; and those who largely express no opinion. When the questions are scaled together this way, they show there is far more support for church-state separation than for church-state integration in the U.S. public at large.

How categories on church-state separation scale were defined

First, all respondents who said “neither/no opinion” or refused to answer in response to four or more of the six items are placed in the “no opinion” category.

Next, all remaining respondents are sorted into one of three categories – “church-state integrationists,” “church-state separationists,” and “mixed.” Those who offered four or more church-state integrationist answers (e.g., “Cities and towns in the U.S. should be allowed to place religious symbols on public property” or “The federal government should stop enforcing separation of church and state”) are placed in the “church-state integrationists” category. Those who offered three church-state integrationist answers also are placed in this category if they offered only one or zero church-state separationist answers.

Those who offered four or more church-state separationist answers (e.g., “Cities and towns in the U.S. should keep religious symbols off public property” or “The federal government should enforce separation of church and state”) are placed in the “church-state separationist” category. Those who offered three church-state separationist answers also are placed in this category if they offered only one or zero church-state integrationist answers.

Respondents who offered three of one kind of answer and at least two of the other kind are placed in the “mixed” category, as are those who offered two of one kind of answer and two or one of the other kind of answer.

Finally, because it is so large, the “church-state separationist” category is sometimes divided into two groups in this report. “Strong” church-state separationists are those who give five or six church-state separationist responses and zero church-state integrationist responses. All other respondents in the larger “church-state separationist” category are classified as “moderate” separationists.

See Methodology for additional details.

Overall, more than half of U.S. adults (55%) express clear support for the principle of separation of church and state when measured this way. This includes 28% who express a strong church-state separationist perspective (they prefer the church-state separationist view in five or six of the scale’s questions and the church-state integrationist position in none) and an additional 27% who express more moderate support for the church-state separationist perspective. By contrast, roughly one-in-seven U.S. adults (14%) express support for a “church-state integrationist” perspective as measured by the survey.

Slightly fewer than one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) have mixed views – expressing support for church-state separation on some of the survey’s questions and support for increased church-state integration on about as many. And one-in-eight offer no opinion on a majority of these questions.

The survey shows, furthermore, that even in the groups that tend to express the most support for the intermingling of church and state, the “church-state integrationist” perspective is the exception, not the norm. Among White evangelical Protestants, for example, fewer than half (36%) express consistent support for a church-state integrationist perspective, although this is larger than the share of White evangelicals who favor the separation of church and state (26%). An additional 28% have mixed views.

Hispanic Protestants (26%) are among the other groups whose sympathy for church-state integration is higher than average. By contrast, a desire for church-state integration is almost nonexistent among U.S. Jews (1%) and the religiously unaffiliated (2%), who consist of those describing their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Among self-identified atheists and agnostics, fully 96% fall into the church-state separationist category.

Most Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party (72%) prefer church-state separation, compared with 38% of Republicans – although even Republicans are more likely to express this view than to consistently favor the integration of church and state (25%).

The survey finds support for church-state integration is slightly higher among White respondents (16%) than among Hispanic Americans (11%). But at the same time, White people also are most likely to voice support for church-state separation , whereas Hispanic and Black Americans are more inclined than White adults to express no opinion on these questions. The survey finds little difference on these questions between U.S.-born adults and those born outside the U.S.

Support for separation of church and state is slightly higher among men than women; women are more likely than men to be in the “no opinion” category. College graduates are far more supportive of church-state separation than are those with lower levels of education. Similarly, young adults (ages 18 to 29) are more likely than their elders to consistently favor the separation of church and state.

Support for separation of church and state is lower in the South than in other parts of the country. Still, even in the South, fewer than one-in-five people consistently express a desire for the integration of church and state.

A closer look at the church-state scale

What, specifically, do people in each category desire in terms of the relationship between church and state? On each of the six scale items, majorities of those in the church-state integrationist category express support for the intermingling of religion and government, ranging from 60% who say the federal government should advocate Christian religious values to 88% who favor allowing towns to exhibit religious displays and public school teachers to lead Christian prayers. By contrast, most church-state separationists take the opposite position on all six questions, ranging from 58% who say religious displays should be kept off public property to 95% who say the federal government should never declare any official religion. These patterns are unsurprising, given the criteria for the categories.

But those in the “mixed” category are perhaps more interesting. Most people in this group say they think religious displays should be permitted on public property (71%) and are comfortable with public school teachers leading Christian prayers (60%). But far fewer think the government should stop enforcing separation of church and state (39%) or that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired (29%). And clear majorities say the federal government should never declare an official religion (62%) and should advocate moral values shared by many faiths (61%) rather than Christian values.

Church-state views, or White Christian nationalism?

The questions in the new survey gauging American attitudes on church-state issues are similar (but not identical) to questions used by other scholars to measure what they call “Christian nationalism.” 1  Research on Christian nationalism shows that it is correlated with attitudes about race, immigration, gender roles, the place of the U.S. in the world, and much more.

The new survey also finds a clear connection between views on church-state issues and attitudes on many other social and political topics, including matters of race and immigration. Most people who support separation of church and state are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, think Donald Trump was a “poor” or “terrible” president, say immigrants strengthen American society, and reject the notion that society is better off if people prioritize getting married and having children. More than half of people with a church-state separationist perspective say it is “a lot” more difficult to be a Black person than a White person in the U.S., and that while the U.S. is one of the greatest countries in the world, there are other countries that are also great.

By comparison, people who favor church-state integration are mostly Republicans and Republican leaners, think Trump was a “good” or “great” president, say the growing numbers of immigrants in the U.S. threaten traditional American values, and feel that society would be better off if more people prioritized getting married and having children. Church-state integrationists are far more inclined than church-state separationists to say that it is “no more difficult” to be Black than White in American society (42% vs. 13%), and that the U.S. “stands above” all other countries (40% vs. 15%).

These are just a few examples of the connection between church-state views and attitudes about social and political issues. Similar correlations exist between church-state views and responses to many other questions about race, immigration, gender, and the place of the U.S. in the world.

The data shows, furthermore, that these connections are at least as pronounced – if not more so – among White Americans as among the public as a whole. White adults with church-state integrationist views are much more likely than White church-state separationists to say Trump was a good or great president (by a margin of 59 percentage points), to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party (by 54 points), to say that immigrants threaten traditional American customs and values (47 points), and to say that society is better when people prioritize getting married and having children (42 points). They also are 35 points more likely to say that being Black is no more difficult than being White in the U.S. today, and 32 points more likely to say the U.S. has a unique place above all other countries in the world.

These results are consistent with much of the existing research on Christian nationalism, which demonstrates that among White people, Christian nationalism is linked with support for the Republican Party, enthusiasm for Trump, hostility toward immigrants and denial that racism is pervasive or systemic in America. But the survey also shows that White church-state integrationists are far from alone in their attitudes on these matters. Indeed, majorities of White people with “mixed” church-state views, as well as of those with a “moderate” church-state separationist perspective, also identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and view Trump as an average or better-than-average president. And majorities of White adults in all three categories (church-state integrationists, moderate church-state separationists, and holders of mixed views on church-state questions) reject the idea that being a Black person is a lot more difficult than being a White person in the U.S. today.

In fact, strong church-state separationists are the only group of White respondents who are mostly Democrats, who mostly think Trump was a below average president, and among whom a majority say being a Black person in the U.S. today is a lot more difficult than being a White person. In other words, to the extent that church-state views are connected with other social and political attitudes among White respondents, those with the strongest church-state separationist viewpoint are in some ways more distinctive from other White people than are those with church-state integrationist views.

A closer look at those with ‘no opinion’ on church-state matters

Roughly one-in-eight survey respondents (12% of all U.S. adults) are categorized as having “no opinion” on the church-state scale, because they say “neither/no opinion” or refuse to answer four (39%), five (30%) or all six (31%) of the questions used to create the scale. This means the size of the “no opinion” group is close to the size of the “church-state integrationist” group (12% and 14%, respectively).

So, who are the respondents in the “no opinion” category? Are they really church-state integrationists but reluctant to express that point of view in response to these questions? Are they church-state separationists who are hesitant to share that opinion? Or are they people who are genuinely uncertain about, unfamiliar with or uninterested in church-state issues?

Of course, the survey cannot provide a direct answer because, by definition, these respondents did not express a point of view – one way or the other – on the church-state questions. However, those in the “no opinion” category are distinctive in certain ways. Perhaps most obviously, they are far less likely than the full sample of respondents to be college graduates (15% vs. 33%), and far more likely to have a high school education or less (56% vs. 36%). This is expected, since past research on patterns of survey response has revealed that people with lower levels of educational attainment are more inclined than those with higher levels of education to express no opinion on many kinds of survey questions. Indeed, in addition to the questions about church-state issues, the survey included 36 other questions that were asked of the full sample of respondents; those in the “no opinion” category decline to provide a substantive response to 3.9 of the 36 questions, on average, compared with 1.6 questions left with no substantive response by respondents in other categories, on average.

Compared with the full sample of respondents, those with “no opinion” on the church-state scale also are less likely to be White, non-Hispanic adults, and more likely to be Black or Hispanic. People in the “no opinion” category also are a bit more likely to be under age 65 than are the full sample of respondents.

In terms of their political and religious profile, there is little evidence to suggest that the “no opinion” category harbors a disproportionate share of either “church-state integrationists” or “church-state separationists.” Compared with the full sample of respondents, those in the “no opinion” group are more likely than the full sample to identify as political independents or with a third party and to decline to lean toward either major party (15% vs. 5%), and also to describe themselves as ideological moderates (50% vs. 38%). The religious profile of those in the “no opinion” group closely resembles the religious profile of the full sample of respondents.

God’s favor for the U.S.

In addition to the six questions that make up the church-state issues scale, the survey included a question that asked Americans which of two statements comes closer to their own view: “God favors the United States over all other countries,” or “God does not favor any one country over all the others.”

Overall, seven-in-ten U.S. adults choose the latter option: God does not favor any one country. Just 5% of U.S. adults say they think God favors the U.S. over all other countries, while 25% say neither, express no opinion or decline to answer. 2

The accompanying detailed tables provide additional information about how social and demographic groups answered the questions about church-state issues.

• Indeed, for this study, Pew Research Center designed a series of questions modeled on items from the Baylor Religion Surveys and identified by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, authors of “ Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States ,” as good indicators of Christian nationalism. The original questions in the Baylor Religion Surveys are agree/disagree questions, in which respondents are presented with a series of statements (e.g., “The federal government should advocate Christian values” and “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces”) and then asked whether they agree or disagree with each. After exploratory testing, the Center’s researchers modified the Baylor questions in a variety of ways. Perhaps most importantly, the Center decided not to ask agree/disagree questions, which leave the alternative position unstated and, in some cases, ambiguous. Instead, the Center’s questions present respondents with two contrasting statements, asking which comes closest to the respondent’s own view. The Pew Research Center survey also gave respondents the option of answering with “neither/no opinion,” just as the Baylor Religion Surveys offered respondents the chance to say “undecided.” In addition to switching from an agree/disagree to a forced-choice/balanced alternative format, the Center also modified the wording of many of the questions, and took some of the focus off of “the federal government.” Five of the six original Baylor items refer explicitly to “the federal government,” but in the Center’s questionnaire, just three of the six items refer explicitly to “the federal government.” ↩
• This question was not included in the scale of church-state views for two reasons. First, unlike the other items, it does not explicitly address matters of church-state separation/integration. Second, it is not as highly correlated with the items in the scale as they are with each other. If this item were added to the scale, Cronbach’s alpha for the scale would drop from 0.759 to 0.745. ↩

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How Jefferson and Madison’s partnership – a friendship told in letters – shaped America’s separation of church and state

More than 2,000 letters between the two founders are available online. many attest to their deep commitment to religious freedom..

(The Conversation) — Few constitutional principles are more familiar to the average American than the separation of church and state.

According to the Pew Research Center, 73% of adults agree that religion should be kept separate from government policies . To be sure, support varies by political or religious affiliation – with Democrats supporting the principle in much higher numbers – and depending on the specific issue, such as prayer in public schools or displays of the Ten Commandments monuments. Yet only 19% of Americans say the United States should abandon the principle of church-state separation .

That said, criticism appears to be on the rise, particularly among political and religious conservatives . And such criticism comes from the top.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson remarked in 2023 that “The separation of church and state is a misnomer … it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that [Thomas] Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life.”

As a scholar of American legal and religious history , I have written extensively about the development of religious freedom in the U.S., and the origins of the separation of church and state.

Two of the Founding Fathers shaped American views on these topics more than any other: Jefferson and James Madison. Yet their views have also become lightning rods for controversy as the “wall” between church and state comes under scrutiny.

My forthcoming book , “The Grand Collaboration,” seeks to answer several questions: What was Jefferson’s and Madison’s understanding of religious freedom? And why were they so deeply committed to that principle?

Bedrock of law – in Virgina and beyond

Jefferson wrote the Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom in 1777, the most comprehensive declaration of religious freedom at the time. The bill guaranteed freedom of conscience, protected religious assemblies from government oversight, prohibited government funding of religious institutions and boldly declared that religious opinions were outside the authority of civil officials.

Thomas Jefferson asked that his gravesite commemorate three of his accomplishments, including writing Virginia’s statute for religious freedom. Christopher Hollis/Wikimedia Commons

Several years later, Madison guided these ideals into law. His “ Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments ,” a protest against a proposal to support Christian teachers with tax money, affirmed the values of church-state separation and religious equality. He helped defeat the proposal – and set the stage for Virginia to adopt Jefferson’s bill.

As president, Jefferson went on to pen a letter to a Baptist association in Connecticut where he immortalized the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state.”

The Bill of Rights contains two clauses about religion, both in the First Amendment : that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What qualifies as “establishment of religion,” however, is open to debate.

In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced church-state separation as the guiding principle for interpreting the religion clauses, relying extensively on the two Virginians’ writings and actions. As Justice Hugo Black wrote, “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.’”

The duo’s documents served as the authority for the legal principle of church-state separation, and for more than five decades, their bona fides remained unquestioned in the law.

Shift at SCOTUS

Criticism of church-state separation intensified in the 1980s. As the religious right grew into a political force, commentators argued that the concept was anti-religious and did not represent the prevailing views about church and state during the founders’ time.

In recent decades, such arguments have attracted politicians and jurists, including members of the Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas has written that the court’s earlier separationist interpretations of the Constitution “sometimes bordered on religious hostility.” Legal scholar Philip Hamburger has declared that “the constitutional authority for separation is without historical foundation ” and “should at best be viewed with suspicion.”

Several recent Supreme Court decisions have rejected a separationist approach to church-state matters. For example, the conservative majority has allowed taxpayer dollars to be used at religious schools , the display of religious symbols on government property, and religious expression by public school employees .

In a 2022 dissent , Justice Sonia Sotomayor bemoaned that the court has turned the separation of church and state from a “constitutional commitment” to a “constitutional violation.”

The justices’ earlier reliance on Jefferson and Madison has borne the brunt of criticism that their views on church-state matters did not represent their peers, or that neither man was in favor of separation as he has been portrayed.

Exchange of ideas

To better understand Jefferson’s and Madison’s beliefs, I examined many of the 2,300 letters between the two on “ Founders Online ,” a National Archives website. I also looked at correspondence with other acquaintances.

Both founders had deistic leanings , meaning they believed in a supreme being, but thought science and reason were the best paths to understanding religion. They were only nominally observant Christians, but more protected from religious intolerance than other “dissenters” due to their high social standing and affiliation with the Anglican Church.

Thomas Jefferson’s official presidential portrait, painted around 1800 by Rembrandt Peale. White House History via Wikimedia Commons

All the more striking, then, that they worked throughout their lives to advance religious freedom.

Religious matters were never far from their minds. For instance, in Madison and Jefferson’s exchanges discussing the need for a bill of rights, freedom of conscience was invariably at the top of the list. Both were convinced that government should avoid supporting religion, even if no particular religion was given preference. They also insisted that people should have broad religious freedoms.

These views were clearly on the vanguard, but other religious rationalists and religious dissenters also advocated a comprehensive understanding of religious freedom .

Both men were committed to advancing religious freedom because they saw it as deeply entwined with freedom of inquiry and conscience. “Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error,” Jefferson wrote in 1784 . Allowing people to investigate ideas freely “will support the true religion,” because “Truth can stand by itself.”

Similarly, Madison declared “the freedom of conscience to be a natural and absolute right.”

In their view, free inquiry was the fount of other rights. Religious freedom, for example, was a subset of freedom of conscience. And a healthy separation of church and state was key to ensuring those freedoms.

‘A pillar of support’

The letters reveal the extent to which Jefferson and Madison complemented and reinforced each other’s attitudes toward church and state. They also reveal the close intellectual and emotional affection that each man held for the other, and how much each man valued the other’s support.

A portrait of James Madison by Chester Harding, painted around 1829, a few years before his death. Daderot/National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons

In their final exchanges before Jefferson’s death on July 4, 1826, he implored Madison, “To myself, you have been a pillar of support thro’ life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.”

Madison responded with similar affection : “You cannot look back to the long period of our private friendship & political harmony, with more affecting recollections than I do.”

Jefferson’s and Madison’s half-century of collaboration on behalf of religious freedom and equality is an important chapter in the nation’s founding history. I believe its legacy should be remembered and celebrated, not discarded.

(Steven K. Green, Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy, Willamette University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

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The Separation of Church and State: An Israeli Example

30 Pages Posted: 2 Oct 2014

Tad D. Ransopher

Georgia State University

Brandi Price

Independent.

Date Written: September 22, 2014

The inherent tension between religion and state often permeates authoritative institutions. Indeed, the laws of man often vie with the laws of God to whatever extent they do not coincide, explicitly or tacitly. Even when in harmony, spiritual laws and statutory laws may conflict on a grander scale, one of authority. Both religious institutions and the state apparatus claim some degree of authority. Power-sharing of this sort proves tricky in even the most entrenched systemic traditions. Change or evolution of any sort-structural, societal, institutional, etc.- can easily upset the balance between church and state. Sixty years ago, the birth of the state of Israel engendered many questions about the relationship between church and state. The vast majority of citizens living within the newly-drawn state claimed Jewish heritage, with some citing it as an ethnic identifier and others a spiritual claim. To complicate the situation, the major minority in the region, the Palestinians, generally practice the Islamic faith, a religion often historically and presently involved and entwined with governance. Other faiths also have a presence in the region, as do other ethnic groups. In discussing the relationship between religion and the state in Israel, the past proves of vital importance. But contemporary thought and international trends hold sway over development in the interaction too. With a diverse and dynamic population and evolving social and political mores, defining an individual's relationship to the church itself can be difficult. Attempting to define a society's or state's relationship with religion proves even more difficult. Many scholars, including, among others, Shimon Shetreet and Winfried Brugger, offer distinct-though often coinciding-frameworks to discuss the relationship between church and state. These models offer a valuable foundation for a discussion of Israel's relationship with religion. The text that follows first lays out a scholarly model for examining the classifying the relationship between church and state. Next, it discusses the workings of the Israeli system, focusing on the overlapping of religious law and the state legal system. Finally, this paper explores the potential problems of the dissonance between the Israeli judicial apparati and religious courts.

Keywords: Church Taxation, Separation of Church and State

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Tad D. Ransopher (Contact Author)

Georgia state university ( email ).

35 Broad Street Atlanta, GA 30303-3083 United States

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