The Island of Logic

Recently IOL had to take on a lib that was commenting in response to Lorenzo’s post “The Separation of Church and State“. I thought that our responses were exceptionally brilliant in this case and would be worthy of an actual post. Shawn actually reminds me of many of the students that I used to have. They had a full knowledge of the facts, but understood no practical application of them. They didn’t have the ability to take their reasoning’s to their logical conclusions. It’s called deductive reasoning, and Shawn doesn’t have it. Here is the conversation below.

Shawn:

Phrase interpreted incorrectly

…

Interpretation incorrect?

Logic?

Where does interpretation intersect with validity? This post proceeds from the assumption that whatever Jefferson meant to say is the correct statement, which is not necessarily true.

The fact is that religion is no different from any other form of organization (it incorporates rank, ideology, and executive centrality); and if one wishes to make the “free speech” argument, then one must recognize the right of other groups to express their views in “public spaces” with displays of symbols.

So how soon after this “wall” is thrown out do we see people standing on the steps of SCOTUS with their fingers hanging over their jeans, and a swastika relief in stone at regional courthouses?

We have a common government, and that common government should only be displaying symbols common to all people, not just the accepted calling cards of the majority.

Jason M:

We do not have a “common” government, and this argument has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Where in the Constitution do you see that our government is a reflection of all people? This is a bunch of drivel. The Constitution does allow all people the right to speech and all religions the right to practice, but it does not in any way respect or reflect the opinions or values of all people. It is built on Judeo-Christian values and our founding fathers made no bones about that. You can see this in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. The wall of separation is to protect religion from Government, but it is not there to protect Government from Religion.

When you have a “living breathing” constitution that bends and molds with the times, you have dead constitution and the rule of law is gone.

Lorenzo:

Shawn, the only problem with your argument is that you can’t change history, no matter how hard you try you can’t do it. I will repeat what I said before the best interpretation, is to see how the people who penned the Constitution lived it out, and I have a feeling when you do you won’t like what you see. Not only did they support a religious framework for the founding of this country they (the federal government) also also purchased 20,000 bibles to be placed in schools,and by the way what do you think the most researched document was for the making of the Constitution? You guessed it the Bible. I really hate it for you, but you can’t change history. http://www.michaelnewdow.com/ContinentalCongress.htm

Shawn:

History cannot be changed, but the future may be salvaged. It is not 1787 anymore.

This country is not bound by the opinions of long-dead men who had no foreknowledge of the immense diversity that would be encountered by the society they founded. This country governs its people, it does not rule. And to govern is to serve the citizens, whether they are of the majority or the minority.

The Constitution being built on similar values to a religion does not make it a propitiation of the religion from which it is derived. The founding document is a legal one. It is law. And as stated in the first amendment to its body, the law cannot ordain a religion with political power.

You are arguing contextualism, which in itself makes the Constitution static and unchanging.

But that brings to mind the first lesson of the exit from adolescence: things change.

Lorenzo:

And yet the further we get away from the Judeo-Christian principles this country was built on, the more we deteriorate as a country and as a society

Jason M:

A Constitution that can be bent and molded with the times without being changed with the amending process breaks down the entire rule of law which keeps a civilized society civil. This is what we see today. We have a President and Judiciary that completely disregard their Constitutional restrictions and do whatever they want. This can only go on for so long, we will either fall into anarchy, statism, or dictatorial rule.

In this day and age we hear a lot of people throwing the phrase “separation of church and state” around like it was the only defining case law for dealing with issues that pertain to religion and government. Anti-religious organizations have used it as an excuse to silence the free expression of religion, and the constitutional rights of those that they feel infringe upon the scope of their particular religious scope of thought. It got me thinking……..Why has a metaphor become so misrepresented in our nation?
No metaphor has had as much on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state”. Today, this figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a description of the constitutionally ordered church-state arrangement, and has become the sacred icon of strict “separationist” zealots that promote a secular society in which Christian influences are systematically and decisively stripped from public life. In our own time the court systems have embraced this phrase as a virtual rule of constitutional law, even though the “phrase” is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.
Let’s explore shall we? …… Okay then, the “wall of separation between church and state” phrase actually comes from a letter written by Jefferson to the “Danbury Baptists” who were concerned that the government (namely the federal government) would be interfering in the religious affairs of the church. Jefferson responds in a letter written New Year’s Day, 1802, he states that “believing with you that religion is a matter that which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach only actions, 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 “. So was Jefferson trying to say that religion has no place in public life? Consider this; Jefferson endorsed using federal funds to build churches and to support Christian missionaries working among the Indians. Jefferson’s intent was to build a wall between the national and state governments, not as some would have us believe, between the church and all civil government. In his second inaugural address delivered in March 1805, he said “in matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general [i.e., Federal] government, I have therefore undertaken on NO occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies”.
The difference in Jefferson’s wall, and the “high and impregnable” wall established in 1947 (Emerson v. Board of Education), and even built higher by the modern Supreme Court, is very, very clear. We only have to look at Jefferson’s record as a public official both as Governor and as President, which shows that he initiated practices and implemented policies that are very inconsistent with wall that is being established today. The wall that has been built today is a barrier that inhibits the activities of both government and religion alike unlike the First Amendment which imposed restrictions, on civil government only.
We must face the facts that the “wall of separation between Church and State” has often been used as an expression of exclusion, intolerance, and bigotry, and has been used to silence people and communities of faith and to exclude them from participation in public life. Today the wall is the poster child of strict separationist rhetoric intolerant of religious influences in the public square, and is being used by Federal, and State courts to justify censoring religious expression in public, stripping public spaces of religious symbols, and even to the extent of wanting to remove crosses from veteran’s graves.
But alas Jefferson’s metaphor has not produced the practical solution that the wall builders intended it to, but rather has done what walls often do, obstruct the view. It has blurred our understanding of constitutional principles. Take away Jefferson’s metaphor, and the “Church and State” debate would probably be more candid and transparent, and the “separationist” movement would be forced to articulate only the assumptions and ideas of their perspective rather gloss over them with a metaphoric slogan. In a pointed criticism of the Court’s use of the metaphor, Justice William Rehnquist said that “the wall is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned”.
The wall of separation was built to keep government out of religion, not to keep religion out of government, or public life, and the high jacking of it by special interest groups and the ACLU just goes to show that we have no understanding or appreciation of our Founding Fathers and what they stood for. We can debate the words and terminology of Jefferson’s metaphor, or the constitution for that matter but the intended meanings and interpretation are found in history, and in the lives of those who wrote them. You want to know what they meant, look at how they lived it out and applied it to their life and time.