Global InformationSeparation of church and state in the United States information
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"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions regarding the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
The principle is paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson's "separation between Church & State." It has been used to express the understandings of the intent and function of this amendment, which allows freedom of religion. It is generally traced to a January 1, 1802, letter by Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper.
Jefferson wrote,
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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 & 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."[1]
Jefferson reflects other thinkers, including Roger Williams, a Baptist Dissenter and founder of Providence, Rhode Island. He wrote:
When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.[2]
In keeping with the lack of an established state religion in the United States, unlike in many European nations at the time, Article Six of the United States Constitution specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" meaning that there will be no official state religion lawfully established.
Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Court wrote that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Hugo Black wrote: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state."
In contrast to this emphasis on separation, the Supreme Court in Zorach v. Clauson (1952) upheld accommodationism, holding that the nation's "institutions presuppose a Supreme Being" and that government recognition of God does not constitute the establishment of a state church as the Constitution's authors intended to prohibit.[3][4]
The extent of separation between government and religion in the U.S. continues to be debated.[5][6][7][8]
- ^ Jefferson, Thomas. Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists: The Final Letter, as Sent. The Library of Congress Information Bulletin: June 1998. Lib. of Cong., June 1998. Web. Aug 7, 2010.
- ^ Church State Council
- ^ Wald, Kenneth D.; Calhoun-Brown, Allison (August 16, 2010). Religion and Politics in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 80–85. ISBN 9781442201538.
- ^ ABA Journal Sep 1962.
- ^ See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 673 (1984)
- ^ Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 760 (1973)
- ^ Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312 (U.S. 1952) ("The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State.").
- ^ Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) ("Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense.")