To Serve God And Mammon

Church-state Relations In The United States

Ted Jelen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000612240
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides fresh perspective on the origins and persistence of church 8211; state conflict in American political culture, exploring the inherent tension between the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment.

1
The Religion Clauses

Competing Religious Values

This sign depicts an alternative interpretation of the holiday season. The religion clauses of the First Amendment protect conventional and unconventional religious beliefs alike. (Tribune photo by Andy Manis)

Among the more prominent—and to some, surprising—characteristics of contemporary American politics is the frequency with which religious values and beliefs are voiced in the making of public policy. Despite the ostensible constitutional separation of church and state, and despite current political, social, and intellectual trends that suggest American public life is becoming increasingly secularized, conflict continually erupts between the realms of the sacred and the secular. This book provides fresh perspective on the origins and persistence of church–state conflict in American political culture, exploring these key questions: What is the nature of conflict over the proper political role of religion in the United States? What are the sources of this conflict? Why are issues of church–state relations such a persistent feature of U.S. politics? Can these issues be resolved in the foreseeable future? Should Americans even seek a clear–cut resolution to the uneasy relationship between church and state?

Pivotal to this discussion is the tension implicit between two clauses in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that relate to religion: the “Establishment” and the “Free Exercise” clauses. Much of the conflict that characterizes religious politics in the United States is attributable to the fact that the Establishment Clause appears to guarantee freedom from religion, whereas the Free Exercise Clause seems to guarantee freedom of religion (Davis 1996). In other words, the Free Exercise Clause allows citizens to hold, act upon, and promote their religious beliefs. In contrast, the Establishment Clause may hold out the promise that such efforts will necessarily be unsuccessful in the realm of politics: A plausible albeit controversial reading of the Establishment Clause suggests that the clause is intended to protect citizens with divergent or nonexistent religious beliefs from the consequences of others’ exercise of religious freedom. The Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, in offering seemingly contradictory guiding principles, have created a dilemma for judges and other public officials seeking to decide legal and policy questions involving religion.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, political and legal controversies over the public articulation of religion were particularly evident. Even a casual observer could not have missed the mass media coverage of one or another political issue involving the relationship between church and state. Following are just a few examples culled from newspapers:

• In Republic, Missouri, a lawsuit was filed against the city council, in an effort to have the city’s logo changed. The logo contained, among other symbols, a line drawing of a fish, which opponents claimed was a “secret Christian symbol” dating from the second century A.D. and thus was violating the separation of church and state (Goddstein 1998).
• In Brooksville, Alabama, the Rev. James Henderson sought the incorporation of his hamlet as a town with the King James Bible as its charter and the Ten Commandments as its ordinances. Rev. Henderson wished to “bring together the church and state,” in an effort to “make life make sense for people.” Proponents argued that a Bible–based town would represent a return to the spirit of the country’s founding fathers (Bragg 1998).¹
• In an effort to provide choices for the parents of schoolchildren, the City of Milwaukee enacted a system based on tuition tax vouchers that could be used at private schools. In response to a lawsuit filed by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS), the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the use of tuition tax vouchers to cover the costs of tuition in religious schools did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state, since the aid was not granted directly to religious institutions but to the parents of students at parochial schools. AUSCS announced its plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and confidently predicted that the Wisconsin high court’s ruling would be reversed (Cohen 1998; Raspberry 1998).²
• A columnist urged passage of the Illinois Religious Freedom Act, arguing that contemporary constitutional law does not adequately protect religious freedom. To illustrate, he noted that under current court rulings, Roman Catholic priests might be required to testify in criminal matters concerning information obtained in the confessional. He suggested that government legally could invoke criminal sanctions against priests who maintained the absolute confidentiality of the sacrament of confession (McConnell 1998).
• The National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a set of “guidelines” for Catholic colleges and universities in the United States. These included the recommendations that a majority (at least) of faculty at such institutions be committed Catholics, that presidents of Catholic institutions take “an oath of fidelity and profession of faith,” and that theology faculty seek certification from local bishops. Critics of the guidelines, among whom were many members of Catholic university faculties, wondered whether these principles were consistent with the norm of academic freedom and whether they would interfere with decisions involving hiring, promotion, and tenure (Steinfels 1999).
• Mildred Rosario, a substitute teacher in a public school in the Bronx, New York, was dismissed from her position. After observing a moment of silence for a student who had recently drowned, Rosario had invited students not wishing to participate in a discussion about God to take a book to the back of the room. She then had asked the remaining students if any of them would like “to accept Jesus as their personal savior.” She laid hands on the foreheads of students while praying aloud. When sanctioned for this activity, Rosario indicated that she had an obligation to continue to promote her choice of Pentecostal Christianity. Both New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke out against her dismissal (Chapman 1998).
• A U.S. district judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Yale University by four orthodox Jewish students, who argued that Yale had violated their right of religious free exercise by forcing them to live in coed dormitories. The university requires most students to live on campus during their first two years, The students alleged that the coed dorms violated their religious liberty, in that the living arrangements violated their faith’s demand that they practice “chastity” and “modesty” (see Chicago Tribune 1998).

The political expression of religious belief in the United States generally has evoked opposition and countermobilization. Religious activists often have been criticized for particular positions they have taken on matters of public policy. More generally, the propriety of religious involvement in the political process also has been questioned. Some observers have raised procedural objections to religiously motivated political activity, arguing that the nation’s founders intended that there be “a wall of separation” (Thomas Jefferson’s words) between politics and religion (Wills 1990).

In contemporary American politics, the topic of church–state relations seems to be raised most often by members of the Religious Right, which consists primarily of doctrinally conservative evangelical Protestants (see Wilcox 1992; and Wilcox, DeBell, and Sigelman 1999). Groups such as Christian Voice, Religious Roundtable, and Moral Majority articulated important connections between religious values and political issues during the 1980s. In 1988, the Rev. Marion “Pat” Robertson, an evangelical Christian television personality, made a serious though unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In the 1990s, religious–political groups such as the Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, and Christian Coalition advocated positions that provoked debates about church–state separation. In the last third of the twentieth century, religiously based political advocacy tended to come from the theological and political right, and the Christian Right was an increasingly important component of the Republican Party’s mass basis of support.

However, the promoters of religious values in the public sphere have not always been religious or political conservatives. Religious zeal, in large part, animated the abolitionist movement of the mid–nineteenth century; the temperance movement of the first third of the twentieth century; many of the reforms advocated by Progressives; the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s; and the more recent “pro–life” or antiabortion movement, which sprang up after the Supreme Court issued its historic decision in Roe v. Wade. Even this short list shows that religiously inspired movements have espoused a variety of actions based on diverse ideologies—an observation that subverts any attempt to directly connect religion (or particular religious traditions) with specific political stances. Many prominent political liberals of the twentieth century—for example, Martin Luther King, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, and Andrew Young—had experience in the Protestant ministry. Furthermore, during the early years of the Reagan administration (early 1980s)—when the public advocacy of liberal principles was unpopular—the United States Catholic Conference spoke out against the mobilization of nuclear weapons and against U.S. military involvement in Central America, and in favor of substantial increases in government assistance to the poor (Jelen 1993).

In sum, the principle of church–state separation is far from self–evident. At various points in American history, sacred values have been advanced by citizens at all points of the political spectrum. Religion is not inherently “liberal” or “conservative” but generally promotes a set of values transcending the terms of contemporary political discourse. At the same time, although most religious organizations are not primarily political in nature, their activity may have a political component. Despite Jesus’s admonition to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s,” there are many areas in which both sacred and secular activists would claim authority.

Why the United States?

Although there is a political aspect to religion in many nations (see Jelen and Wilcox, eds., forthcoming), some aspects of the relationship between church and state in the United States appear unique. Arguments of American exceptionalism seem particularly plausible in the case of public religion. First, America is a highly religious country. Whether one measures religion in terms of belief, public observance, or affiliation, the population of the United States is substantially more religious than that of any other industrialized nation (Wald 1997). Indeed, the United States is an outlier in a commonly reported negative relationship between religiosity and modernization. The United States stands virtually alone as a nation with both a highly modern economy and a highly religious population. One would expect religious issues to be more important in American politics than in other national political settings, because religion is relatively important to Americans.

Table 1.1 Religious Observance and Belief in Selected Western Nations

	Church Attendance^1	Importance of God^2
Belgium	35	13
Canada	40	28
France	17	10
East Germany	20	13
West Germany	33	14
Great Britain	25	16
Iceland	9	17
Republic of Ireland	88	40
Northern Ireland	69	41
Italy	47	29
Netherlands	31	11
Norway	13	15
Spain	40	18
Sweden	10	8
United States	59	48

¹ Percent reporting attending religious services at least once a month

² Percent rating importance of God in one’s life at 10, on a ten-point scale
source: Author’s compilation from data in World Values Study, 1990–1991.

As the data in Table 1.1 show, a substantial majority of Americans report attending religious services at least once a month. This figure exceeds all other countries listed in Table 1.1, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which are somewhat less industrialized than most other Western nations. Moreover, religious affiliation is an important source of national identity for the Irish. Table 1.1 also shows that the attachment of importance to God in one’s life is more widespread in the United States than in any other nation listed, including Ireland.

The extent of religious belief and practice appears to be a source of both cohesion and conflict in American politics. Because religious belief in general is so widespread, the rhetorical symbols associated with support for religious faith are extremely powerful. Few candidates running for public office would publicly identify themselves as atheists or agnostics. As I write, a number of potential presidential candidates of both parties are making public statements about the depths of their own religious belie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 The Religion Clauses: Competing Religious Values
• 2 The Uses of History
• 3 Debating the Public Role of Religion: The Protagonists
• 4 From Christian America to Free Exercise: The Changing Nature of the Church–State Debate
• 5 The Future of the Church–State Debate
• Appendix: Selected Supreme Court Decisions
• Glossary
• References
• Index