See?
chuckd said:
Dr. Watson,
In what way was the church and state "one and the same". What particular "link" between church and state does the Constitution protect citizens from? What did the Puritans believe regarding this link?
chuckd said:
When you say "one and the same" or "one entity", I envision ministers of the gospel governing the people, making laws and bearing the sword. Politicians preaching on Sunday and administering the Lord's Supper. Is that what you mean? Surely not because you said Puritans believed ministers could not hold or stand for political office.
One and the sameDr. Watson said:chuckd said:
When you say "one and the same" or "one entity", I envision ministers of the gospel governing the people, making laws and bearing the sword. Politicians preaching on Sunday and administering the Lord's Supper. Is that what you mean? Surely not because you said Puritans believed ministers could not hold or stand for political office.
England was a unified church and state under Henry VIII. The fact that his generals didn't wear cassocks doesn't mean the church and state were separate.
chuckd said:
Even so, your point seems to be: England once held to erastiansm which looked like a unified church & state, so anything looking like a relationship between church and state is erastianism, unified, one and the same, and one entity. Despite the Puritans rejected erastianism long ago.
k2aggie07 said:
I have had this discussion on here before, but I don't think there is any inherent evil in a country having a national religion. I think that freedom of religion and state religions aren't mutually exclusive. I would need to understand what a law "favoring" a religion means.
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I believe in the two spheres doctrine - that civil governance and matters of faith have separate jurisdiction.
Dr. Watson said:
And which point am I missing? The framers largely sought to protect people from systems of belief as much as they sought to protect systems of belief from the state.
the free exercise clause doesn't, but the establishment clause of the first amendment does. The state churches of the original colonies would be illegal today. Requiring religiously-themed oaths of office is also unenforceable. Even nativity scenes on public property have to be somewhat secularized.k2aggie07 said:
Free exercise of religion does not mean keep all religion out of government. You keep saying it as if they were synonymous, and they are not.
Hate to sound like a broken record, but the first amendment exists to protect the free exercise of religion from government, not to scrub all religious aspects from the government. The concern wasn't a tyrannical church, it was a tyrannical government.
Anyway you could sum up the general sentiment of separation of church and state in those days as "we all believe in God, so there's no reason to bring religion into it."
What is that? A sign over Mary that says "not a virgin"?Quote:
Even nativity scenes on public property have to be somewhat secularized.
And yet, they weren't illegal when the establishment clause was written, weren't illegal after the establishment clause was ratified as an amendment with the rest of the bill of rights. The first amendment wasn't incorporated until 1923 - and the reason was the 14th amendment.Quote:
the free exercise clause doesn't, but the establishment clause of the first amendment does. The state churches of the original colonies would be illegal today. Requiring religiously-themed oaths of office is also unenforceable. Even nativity scenes on public property have to be somewhat secularized.
k2aggie07 said:And yet, they weren't illegal when the establishment clause was written, weren't illegal after the establishment clause was ratified as an amendment with the rest of the bill of rights. The first amendment wasn't incorporated until 1923 - and the reason was the 14th amendment.Quote:
the free exercise clause doesn't, but the establishment clause of the first amendment does. The state churches of the original colonies would be illegal today. Requiring religiously-themed oaths of office is also unenforceable. Even nativity scenes on public property have to be somewhat secularized.
What this should tell you is that the establishment clause doesn't mean what you have been told. At least not by itself.
Martin Q. Blank said:
Establishment clause was to prevent Congress from establishing a church. Church of England, Church of Connecticut, Church of Massachusetts, but no Church of the United States.
Why "except"? Did I say something incorrect?Dr. Watson said:Martin Q. Blank said:
Establishment clause was to prevent Congress from establishing a church. Church of England, Church of Connecticut, Church of Massachusetts, but no Church of the United States.
Except it was viewed as antithetical to the American republic from almost the beginning and all state churches were gone in fact by Jackson's second term and gone in principle well before that.
Martin Q. Blank said:Why "except"? Did I say something incorrect?Dr. Watson said:Martin Q. Blank said:
Establishment clause was to prevent Congress from establishing a church. Church of England, Church of Connecticut, Church of Massachusetts, but no Church of the United States.
Except it was viewed as antithetical to the American republic from almost the beginning and all state churches were gone in fact by Jackson's second term and gone in principle well before that.
Dr. Watson said:chuckd said:
Even so, your point seems to be: England once held to erastiansm which looked like a unified church & state, so anything looking like a relationship between church and state is erastianism, unified, one and the same, and one entity. Despite the Puritans rejected erastianism long ago.
I'm saying the framers feared the link between church and state. Technically, in theory, the Puritans were not a theocracy. In practice, the state supported one church and that one church supported the state. They socially and politically supported one another and punished heresy through state courts. If you want to be pedantic about it, there was a separation, but that was designed more to protect the church than a concern about the rights of the people under the state or concerns about the legal functioning of the state.
Are you a lawyer? I would not let the vast majority of lawyers tell me I'm wrong about a constitutional issue, because quite frankly, most lawyers know just the bare minimum about constitutional issues that they happened to pick up in law school. The first amendment was not incorporated in 1923, it was incorporated selectively and piecemeal, much like the rest of the bill of rights. The establishment clause was incorporated late and it had to do with issues of generally-available state funding being used by religious folks. See Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing (1947). It had nothing to do with a state religion.k2aggie07 said:And yet, they weren't illegal when the establishment clause was written, weren't illegal after the establishment clause was ratified as an amendment with the rest of the bill of rights. The first amendment wasn't incorporated until 1923 - and the reason was the 14th amendment.Quote:
the free exercise clause doesn't, but the establishment clause of the first amendment does. The state churches of the original colonies would be illegal today. Requiring religiously-themed oaths of office is also unenforceable. Even nativity scenes on public property have to be somewhat secularized.
What this should tell you is that the establishment clause doesn't mean what you have been told. At least not by itself.
lol, have fun making sense of this mess at the Supreme Court:swimmerbabe11 said:
Wait, what is a secular nativity scene?
Google had a bill of rights one that was disturbing at best. A doctor who one, and then some normal ones but with Santa showing up?
So while the first amendment did not make state endorsements of religion illegal at the state level, most states outlawed it anyway, so I do take issue with the characterization that it was legal to have a state religion at the time the Establishment Clause was adopted. The Supreme Court in Cummings characterizes the states as having secured freedom of religious opinion in their state constitutions. That was generally true then.k2aggie07 said:
Sigh. I had a long post typed up and I lost it. Thanks for this response, I appreciate it. I believe we agree, except you are saying it more better.
Essentially my point, and what I believe your quotes demonstrate clearly, is that the first amendment did not make state churches illegal. Only a national church.
Further, I don't know that we can say that the idea of a state church was abhorrent based on a single quote from Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists (especially considering that his personal views were somewhat antithetical to organized religion in general), even among the founders. Webster seems to be only arguing that the Church of England was connected to England politically, and so the revolution severed that civil / political tie. The 1886 ruling seems to confirm my point, but particularly seems to be addressing the idea of a state licensing or reviewing the suitability of a preacher or priest's "orthodoxy".
I'm not saying that incorporation is wrong. I wouldn't even say, without further thought, that incorporation wasn't present in the amendments themselves as a kind of legal seed, allowing inevitably for the growth you described.
I think most people have a very anachronistic view of the first amendment. Even here you hint at it, almost implying that because something is illegal, it was illegal, owing to judgments or rulings that happened in the interim. I don't think we can say that, and I don't think we can project our interpretations backwards to the framers.
I don't know what you mean when you say state religion. That can be as restrictive as papal review of books for publication, to oaths of office or tests of orthodoxy, to something as relatively benign as a religion having "prevailing religion" status in Greece. To know whether or not the founders would have found this to be wrong, I think we'd have to be a little more precise.
The Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 is a great example of this. Oaths are an anathema, right? Because we have religious freedom. Nobody needs to confess any faith to have office or a public position as long as they believe in God and an afterlife of rewards or punishment.
Wait, what? I thought we said no oaths?
I think most colonists and perhaps the framers themselves would have held to a much less liberal or broad definition of separation of church and state, limiting it to restriction of favoring one branch of Christianity over another. "We all believe in God, right guys?" I am not sure religious discrimination of non-Christians would have seemed to them to be contrary to this spirit. But this is speculation on my part.
What it certainly did not mean was the extremely radical modern application that somehow there can be no involvement whatsoever between religion and the state. I am not as far from Watson or your opinions as it may appear. I just think it is important that whenever possible we try to guard ourselves from anachronism and time-bias when thinking about the past. It's hard.
Yes! And add to that - they weren't particularly revolutionary. Nothing in the US constitution as drafted isn't found somewhere else in history - most of it is in Aristotle's politics. They were just humans, smart enough to read and learn from history. Our constitution was the next link in a very, very long chain. It was not dropped from heaven or the first of its kind.Quote:
Yes, they were incredibly intelligent, but they dealt with the struggles of their time and their laws were a reflection of those problems.