The great divide: separation of church and state 
April 25, 2011 by Cole Peterson
Florida bill would foolishly allow government to fund religious institutions
Florida is attempting to pass a bill that would destroy the separation of church and state. The bill in question would remove a state constitutional provision that prevents the government from spending money on sectarian religious organizations. Essentially, they want to be able to hand out tax dollars to their favorite churches, First Amendment be damned.
Promoters of the bill claim that preventing the government from funding religious groups is equivalent to discriminating against religious groups. What they mean to say is that it’s discrimination against the specific religious groups that they approve of and wish to endorse, since it’s highly unlikely that Florida officials are eagerly awaiting the chance to hand out money to the local mosque or coven.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and while it is often the case that these lines are presented as a shield to protect government from the influence of theology, it is in fact a two-way street.
Religion is protected from government interference. This is good. No one wants bureaucrats telling people what they’re allowed to believe, when they’re allowed to believe it and (and this one is important because this is the danger the Florida bill represents) granting special favor to those who happen to believe the “right thing.” The “right thing” is, of course, whatever those in power believe.
Much argument has been made the last several years over the idea that America is a “Christian nation.” Usually, the proponents of this idea use arguments that are mostly hyperbole and fiction with a bit of truth sprinkled in to make it palatable to the masses.
The Founding Fathers, for example, are often held up as having been devout Christians. Some of them were, yes, but some of them most certainly were not. Also, a few of them had an abiding distrust and dislike for organized religion, believing faith and spirituality to be strictly personal matters.
There were individuals at the Constitutional Convention who wanted the Constitution to sanction a specific religion. There were others who wanted to require government officials to publicly subscribe to that religion. The Constitution does neither of those things, however.
In fact, the only times it makes mention of religion at all make it clear that there is to be no religious interference in government. That, more than anything else, tells me that the Founding Fathers had no desire to mix church and state to create a Christian nation. What they desired was a free nation where there was no pressure to believe a certain way, and a quick look at history shows why.
In Protestant England, Catholics and members of other religions were treated as second-class citizens. The Puritans traveled to the New World to escape such discrimination and promptly set up their own brand of bigotry in which they banished anyone who did not share their beliefs.
All across colonial America, governments were set up that promoted one type of religion over all others, denying certain rights to those not of the “proper” faith. Usually, Catholics and Jews were on the wrong end of things, and they were not allowed to vote or to hold public office.
I like to think that the Founding Fathers looked back at this long history of religious discrimination and decided that they were going to do things differently.
I like to think that they wanted to make all faiths — or no faith — feel welcome and to create a government that would not be influenced by any god, instead standing for humanity itself. I like to think that people can see just how messy things can get if we allow our politicians even more latitude when it comes to mixing religion and government.
Bills like the one being considered in Florida let me know I’m being naive.
The situation in Florida is the most egregious breach of the First Amendment in a very long time, but there have been many similar attempts to evade the laws of the Constitution. Someone wants prayer in a city council meeting, someone wants the Ten Commandments outside the courthouse or someone wants a psalm hung up in the school gym. In all cases, the results are the same. Someone else — someone who understands and respects the Constitution — files a lawsuit. The state loses. The taxpayers pay for it.
So, for those who can’t be convinced that religion and politics should remain separate, at least consider the public money that gets thrown away every time politicians take it upon themselves to push an agenda that favors their religious preferences.
Congratulations, your article was very well written and argued.
“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together”, James Madison.
The US has a long way to go to become as bad as Canada when it comes to the intertwining of Church and state. Canada still funds a separate Catholic school system in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In Ontario, no other faith receives any funding for their schools — Catholic schools alone are funded (at 100%) while other faiths receive nothing. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, other faiths can get some partial funding, but nothing approaching the full funding the Catholic faith enjoys. Unofficially, the Catholic faith is the “official” (only funded) faith of Ontario. It is the favoured faith in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
Keep up the fight. It is an outrage to have a “preferred” faith — or a single preferred sect of a single preferred faith as we do here in Canada.
Your statement about how many of our founding fathers were not christians or believers was not backed up with any evidence, and if you had done your research and looked up even some quotes, you’d find that 1, maybe 2 of the founding fathers were not believers. The rest believed very firmly in a government built on a Christian foundation.
Ben, it seems that you are the one who has not done his research. Despite the occasional quote dug up by religionists, many of the founding fathers had little use for Christianity. A short list of founders who had much to say in disparagement of Christianity would include Paine, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison. Even our iconic President Lincoln had some pretty curt and dismissive things to say about it. All you have to do is tear yourself away from revisionist Christian ideological websites and you can find voluminous anti-religious quotes from these gentlemen and others. Further, the imputation of a religious base to the founding of this country is absurd. You might as well say that it is a Catholic country because the discoverers, explorers and convertors of the natives were mostly of that faith. Of course, that is the last thing a modern Christian (Evangelical: Protestant) would want to do. And, the plain fact is that a primary cause of our revolution was to escape from the capricious actions of a king who was also head of England’s church. To clinch the matter, there is the religionist’s bane called the Treaty of Tripoli, which states the US is in no way a Christian country. Unlike, say, the Declaration of Independence, this is the duly enacted LAW OF THE LAND. Look it up!