Seperation Of Church And State Essay Research

Seperation Of Church And State Essay, Research Paper

The Separation of Church and State in America

Church and State seem to be two words which are entirely inseparable from each other. Religion in politics and the government has been present since the federal government was first put into place. The issue of religion is present in such varied topics as the public school system, presidential elections, right down to the National Anthem. The fact of the matter is, Church and State are very far from being separate in the United States.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These opening words of the First Amendment of the Constitution set forth a guarantee of religious freedom in the United States. The Establishment clause was intended to accomplish this end by, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, creating a “wall of separation between Church and State.” The First Amendment prevented the government from interfering in it’s citizens religious lives. It did not, however, prevent the federal government from engaging in it’s own.

The Fourteenth Amendment, Ratified in 1868, states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the Unites States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This Amendment, one of the Civil War Amendments, would later be used by the Supreme Court to extend the religion clauses of the first amendment beyond the country and to the states. After the Civil War, President Grant moved for the state governments, in addition to the federal government, to be kept out of the citizens religious affairs.

In 1876 James G. Blaine proposed an Amendment to congress to accomplish this task, extending the religious clauses of the first amendment, and adding a prohibition of aid to parochial schools. Senator Frelinghuysen, who opposed the Blaine amendment, stated that “The Blaine Amendment very properly extends the prohibition of the first amendment of the Constitution to the States. Thus the Blaine Amendment prohibits the States, for the first time, from the establishment of religion, from prohibiting its free exercise, and from making any religious test a qualification to office.” Senator Eaton of Connecticut, and others with the same objections to the Blaine Amendment, felt that the Constitution prevented congressional involvement in the peoples religious lives, and that the states should be left to make their own decisions on the matter. The Blaine Amendment was proposed to the House, passed, and then defeated in the Senate. It would be proposed to congress and defeated over and over again for the next 50 years, but not abandoned until the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment extended the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the states making the Blaine Amendment superfluous.

In 1908 The United States Supreme Court reviewed a series of cases “in which the states were held not bound by the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment, the right to a grand jury indictment guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment right to be confronted by one’s accusers, or the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury in civil cases.” This did not mean that none of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights could be applied to the states. It simply meant that because the federal government was prohibited from doing something by the Bill of Rights, did not mean that the states were subject to the same prohibitions.

State courts continued to maintain that the religion clauses of the First Amendment were not applicable to state actions. “In a case in 1908, for example, two Roman Catholics, two Jews, and one person who ‘does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible,’ sued their school board in Texas to stop the reading in the public schools of the King James version of the Bible, the recitation of the Lord’s prayer, and the singing of hymns. The children were not required to participate, most Biblical passages were taken from the Old Testament, and when a rabbi complained about certain of the songs being prepared for a Christmas pageant, the superintendent of schools, according to his testimony, ‘had it stopped.’” Their were no violations of the Texas state constitution in these activities, as well as no reference to the federal Constitution in the Texas Supreme Court findings.

As of 1940, more then 150 years after the Constitution came into effect, more then seventy years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the religion clauses of the First Amendment had never been extended to the states. In 1947, Arch R. Everson argued to the Supreme Court to extend the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the states. The case was concerning the state governments paying for transportation parochial school children the schools. Justice Hugo Black seized this opportunity and stated that “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.” This was just one step in extending the entire Bill of Rights to the states.

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