December 15, 2018, marked the 227th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which protects freedoms such as speech, press, and religion. It says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” To the Founders, this meant walling off government from interfering with Americans’ faith. Nowadays, the understanding of that wall has become so twisted, it’s sometimes used to prevent Americans from practicing their faith.
It’s as if today’s interpreters think “making no law respecting an establishment of religion” means government and God can have nothing to do with each other. But what did the Founding Fathers who wrote the First Amendment actually mean?
“When the Founders talked about separation of church and state, they had a historical context that we really lack,” David Barton of WallBuilders told CBN News. He said those Founders saw great danger in rulers establishing a specific religion their subjects then had to practice.
Christian historian Rev. Eddie Hyatt, the author of Pilgrims & Patriots, explained, “Church and state were merged together, and the church used the power of the state to enforce its doctrines and practices.”
Hyatt mentioned certain governments used deadly force against dissenters who wanted to worship in their own way, saying, “Those people were persecuted, burned at the stake, some had their tongues cut out. The Founders did not want that kind of Christianity.”
Barton added, “And so that’s the context they have for the separation of church and state. It was never the church taking over the state. It was always the state taking over the church.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote to worried Connecticut pastors in a famous 1802 letter that’s come to be known as the Danbury Baptist letter, assuring them the government wouldn’t interfere with their faith. “’Because there’s a wall of separation between church and state,'” Barton said, quoting Jefferson. He continued, “And so the way he used it was ‘guys, the government’s not going to stop religious activities. So, in Jefferson’s mind, the wall of separation was a uni-directional wall put there to keep the government out of the church. Not to keep the influence of the church out of the government.”
Then almost 150 years later, more liberal justices and judges began to interpret that as meaning government had to wall off any touch of faith on any public institution or the people in it. William Federer, the author of the daily American Minute.com, stated, “And that’s when they began to re-interpret that phrase to say ‘no. We’re going to get faith and God and everything out.'”
Such as when it came to the U.S. Supreme Court justices ruling in 1980 that kicked the Ten Commandments out of public schools. “They said if the Ten Commandments were on the schoolroom wall, the children might read them, meditate on them, venerate them and obey them,” Barton explained.
Hyatt stated the Founders would be distressed by these rulings. He said they were, “Used as a weapon to try to marginalize Christianity, to ban Bible reading and prayers from public schools, remove crosses and Ten Commandment displays from public places.”
Liberty Institute attorney Jeremy Dys fights for religious rights. He told CBN News, “When the government tells you what you can believe and what you cannot believe, that is a significant loss in our freedom.”
In that same letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson showed where he stands. Barton shared, “At the end of it, Thomas Jefferson says ‘will you please pray to God for me? And I will pray to God for you.’ He violates the separation of church and state in the very letter that gave us the phrase ‘separation of church and state.'” As Barton put it, “So Jefferson’s concept is totally opposite to what goes on today.”
Barton pointed out, somewhat ironically, “The U.S. Supreme Court has more than 50 depictions of the Ten Commandments in its own building. And yet they’re the ones who say ‘you can’t let kids see the Ten Commandments; they might obey them.'”
Hyatt mentioned the Continental Congress opened all their sessions with prayer. He said of the Founders, “They did not want a national church, but they wanted God in all their proceedings.” He said when they spoke of making no law respecting an establishment of religions, “They absolutely did not mean the separation of God and government. They certainly did not intend to make America into some sort of secular wasteland.”
Dys observed, “Think of the many cases that are going on right now, whether it’s the baker cases or if it’s involving contraceptives to nuns that we’ve seen in recent years. What if we allowed people in this country again to be able to live according to their religious convictions, their religious conscience rights, without interference by the government?”
He concluded, “At a very minimum, I think we should agree that if we’re going to err on anything, we should err on the side of freedom.”