Ghost of a flea: A hedge of separation

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July 05, 2005

A hedge of separation

Canada having no formal separation between church and state I am disappointed to read so many of my neighbours in the great republic to the south so lightly dismissing Article VI of, and the First Amendment to, their Constitution as a "myth". Thomas Jefferson may be best remembered for a letter he drafted to King George III* in which he wrote that men were "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In 1802, then third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson wrote another letter, this one to the Danbury Baptist Association.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should �make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,� thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Thomas Jefferson, at least, did not think his reading of the Constitution or his duties in upholding it were a "myth". It is important to note he borrowed the letter's most resonant phrase from Roger Williams, who in 1644 argued "a hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world" should be formed for the protection of religious belief. Jefferson's intention was to protect religious belief from its debasement in the operations of government or the notion belief should, or indeed could, be imposed by the state. Any educated religious person of his day, so familiar with the dictates of this or that denomination in the Thirteen Colonies or across the seas in England, would have recognized the reference. It is sad that with two centuries of religious liberty fewer people would know the name Roger Williams and understand that the need identified by Jefferson and the Founding Fathers is no less pressing today.

I could not agree more with something Andrew Sullivan had to say on the subject:

I've long believed that the most committed Christians are secularists as well. They know that government-engineered faith is fatal to real religion; and that faith that needs government is a pale image of what it should be.

It is also worth pointing out another religious authority who offered advice in the same vein (for details see Luke 20:21-26).

*Less well known is a reply from the government of George III.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 5, 2005 09:27 AM

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