Mend The Wall

by Brian Burns

For many years now Evangelicals in America have been positioning themselves inside of Washington D.C., and have twisted the definition of the First Amendment to our Constitution to mean something that it never has. The First Amendment in our Bill of Rights states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Evangelicals take this to mean they have the right to erect religious icons in our government buildings and public spaces, and completely miss the mark when they claim our nation is a “Christian nation”. The fact behind their matter is faith-based, and it has grown to where the ‘wall of separation between church and state’, the true essence of the First Amendment, is being torn down before our eyes by those who have either sworn, or are preparing themselves to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The ‘wall of separation’ between church and secular affairs was first introduced to us by a Christian preacher in colonial Massachusetts named Roger Williams. As a Separatist from the Church of England, Williams was steadfast in his faith, but the Puritanical version he practiced was at odds with England’s state-sanctioned Anglican religion, and so he set sail for Boston. After turning down the offer to replace a minister in an “unseparated” church, he accepted one offered by his fellow Puritans in Salem. Salem, however, was under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Boston authorities stopped Williams from settling there. Instead, he moved on to Plymouth Colony, where he was more than welcomed by the citizens to lead the teachings in their church, as they too were Puritans who held Separatist views akin to those of Williams. Though still under the rule of England, the colonists considered their New World as one that was removed from their native lands, and many wanted it to be regarded as an independent state. They wanted to enact their own laws, and wanted to be able to worship without being scrutinized by the Church of England. In general, they were seeking religious freedom, and Williams preached their sentiments loudly.

Roger Williams was enthusiastic when he saw that the American colonies were booming with religious variations from across Europe. He saw it as somewhat of a refuge for ‘Separatists’ around the world, and was happy to find that it wasn’t only his people seeking freedom from religious persecution. He noticed that people led moral lives regardless of their faith, accepted all good people, and soon after Williams even befriended the local pagan tribes of Native Americans. Williams believed in religious freedom for not only the sect of Puritans that had come to populate Massachusetts, but for all people in general, and he spoke of it during his sermons.

Although Williams soon found that those who desired religious freedom from the Church of England were no more accepting of the notion of religious freedom than that which they fled, for after only two short years he was forced from the church and back to Salem. There he lived as the assistant to the pastor in their church, before taking over his predecessor’s position after the pastor died just a year after. Salem, however, did not take kindly to Williams’ sermons, in which he preached the acceptance of people with opposing beliefs, and was soon after brought up on charges of spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions”. Both the lawmakers and his own Puritanical people thought it would be best if he were excommunicated to England, and so Williams went into exile.

A year later, in 1636, Williams along with some of his followers settled in a section of land southwest of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and called it Providence. Soon after, Williams saw the area flourishing with those who had escaped persecution in the new colonies, and founded the Colony of Rhode Island. It was the first colony that made civil issues a matter of majority rule, but gave acceptance and equality to all religious and non-religious people, and by 1639 Baptists, Quakers, Puritans, Huguenots, and even Jews had established congregations in Providence and its neighboring territories. Scattered amongst them were Atheists who had no gods guiding their morals, but Williams saw that they were ethical people with their own opinions on religious matters, and was happy to treat them as equals. In 1640 Williams wrote in his ‘The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution’, “No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.”

In his fervent battle for the ‘freedom of religion’ Williams wrote many treatises on why the cities and towns of the New World needed to be open to what he referred to as varying “opinions” of spirituality. He recognized the morality of individuals who held opposing views on religion, and later in his life would write, “God requirth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil wars. . . . It is the will and command of God that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries.”

As the Puritans in Massachusetts were hanging Quakers, and taxing 100 pounds to each ship carrying Quakers onto shore, Roger Williams was planting the seeds of his vision of a melting-pot of free people. He saw the persecution that takes place when governments have preferred or “official” religions, and the dangers in closed-mindedness toward matters of opinion. He saw the dangers in governments that involve themselves in religious affairs of the populace, and he saw the same dangers in religions that involve themselves in politics. In 1644 Williams 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.” This was the inspiration for what Thomas Jefferson would later call “The wall of separation between church and state.”

This ‘wall’ – the notion of government affairs being kept out of religion and vice versa, was imperative for the assembling of a free country, as it was imperative to have the freedom to worship as each citizen saw fit. It was never intended to become a nation where only certain sects of Christianity were free to worship. Nor was it ever intended to be a land where only god-fearing people are free to live and practice their beliefs. America never had a state sanctioned religion because this nation was born from those who sought the freedom to worship away from state sanctioned religions, and by those who desired the freedom to not worship any god at all. The very first amendment to our Constitution, this being on the fore-front of the minds of our Founding Fathers, gives everyone the right to live freely in America without having to be burdened by the dogma of a lone religious sect. America is an Atheist nation as much as it is a Jewish nation, as much as it is a Christian nation, and as much as it is a nation of pagans that are our Native American Indians.

A century after Williams’ death, our nation’s Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution of the United States of America, and shortly thereafter the first ten amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights. The man responsible for authoring both bills, appropriately known as the ‘Father of the Constitution’ and the ‘Father of the Bill of Rights’, was James Madison, our nation’s fourth president. He was also known as Thomas Jefferson’s protégé, and worked by his side in drafting and passing into law ‘The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom’. In the first section of the document Jefferson expounds on various points including two points influential in Madison’s First Amendment rights. Jefferson wrote, “The coercion of a person to make contributions—especially monetary—to a religion he doesn’t support is tyrannical and creates favoritism among ministers,” and, “Civil rights do not depend on religious beliefs, and what a person thinks is no business of the government.” In the second section Jefferson wrote, “…no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” Given this history it is without a doubt that Madison had the explicit intention of erecting a wall between church and state in our Bill of Rights that the Founding Fathers signed into law.

Today’s Evangelicals understandably fear their lives being without purpose, and their entire belief system being nullified as gains in evolutionary-science march forth. Many fear the thought of not having an after-life, and the nothingness that life becomes when we as an organism die off. They fear the loneliness that could accompany ‘being without god’, and the autonomy they would be left with. They fear not having the comfort they feel from their spiritual protection, and the safety of the omnipresence watching over them. They see the social-society in America running amok from the civil chastity that comforts them. They see our children becoming more open with their sexuality, and more independent with their thoughts, and they fear its contagiousness. They fear their children growing up being influenced by the hypotheses of scientific experiments because it is killing their notion of gods, and would gladly smother space exploration for the further we reach to the stars the further their heaven fades. And as they grow, and their lives become more orderly, they find safety in believing their god has ultimate control over the situation, and believing it would never let the situation get too far out of hand. But what they fail to see is that humanity is moral by nature, not by bibles and scripture.

As stated earlier, the fact of their matter is faith-based, and faith is an individual viewpoint. The faith one has religiously might be identical to another’s at the apex of the subject, but when broken down into particulars their views could differ greatly. If a Christian and a Hindu were asked if they believe in the presence of an omnipotent being their answers would be identical. However, once the particulars of their individual views of omnipotent beings came into light we would see vast differences, to when we could conclude that they hold opposing beliefs. Even in Christianity alone, where according to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are over 33,000 sects worldwide, this act of breaking the matter down into particulars is what is ultimately responsible for the formation of the multitude of sects. It is the multitude of sects that proves that Christians alone do not have an answer of what their god truly wants, for if they did there would be uniformity, and so they’re left with faith in their beliefs; they are left with their opinions. It is the recognition of religion being solely opinion-based that led to the religious freedom clause in our First Amendment. The Founding Fathers realized that every sect believes they ‘know’ what their god wants, but since they all provide different answers they only ‘know’ what they believe to be true. Nevertheless, the Evangelicals wage their war on the Constitution because it doesn’t mix well with their vision of American culture. They want their religion erected in every government building and in every town square they choose. They believe it is their right.

It comes at these times – the twilight of sectarian power backed by prejudice and fear, when we see the births of historical religious wars, and inquisitions. We see today’s Evangelicals manipulating their way into our nation’s government through what seems to be a large hole in the wall of separation between church and state. They believe we should rewrite the Constitution to “reflect god’s laws”. However, the inspiration of Roger Williams and those who wrote all three of our Charters of Freedom, are the only ‘divine spirits’ which back our nation’s First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.