America's cornerstone: Belief in God

Editor's note: Radio talk-show host Phil Valentine's new book, "Right from the Heart," presents compelling arguments on a host of public-policy issues – one for each letter of the alphabet, from A to Z. Hailed by Fox News' Sean Hannity as "one of the most important pieces of conservative work in recent memory," Valentine's book provides the reader with ammunition to debunk the many politically correct positions presented in today's media.

This is the second of three excerpts WND is featuring from three chapters of the book. Today's excerpt deals with how belief in God anchors the American republic. Yesterday's excerpt took on the so-called AIDS crisis. "Right from the Heart" is available at WorldNetDaily's online store, ShopNetDaily. Each copy ordered will be autographed free by the author.

One of the most misused phrases in American culture is "separation of church and state." We hear this all the time. We can't have a Nativity scene in the town square because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. We can't have a prayer before a football game because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The city manager of Eugene, Ore., banned Christmas trees from public buildings, believe it or not, because they violated the constitutional separation of church and state – or so he said.

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Hear me on this one, people. There is NO such thing as separation of church and state in the United States Constitution. It is nowhere to be found in the entire document. The First Amendment simply states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It articulates a freedom of religion, not a freedom from it. The polemical history of the First Amendment grows more and more contentious.

Original intent

To understand what the Founding Fathers meant, you have to understand the times in which they lived. Back when the Constitution was crafted, individual states had their own state religions. Their individual state constitutions laid down the law regarding church and state. Not only did the states not separate the two, many required that they be joined.

North Carolina's constitution said:

"That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the Divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit, in the civil department within this state."

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Several states, instead of requiring an officeholder to be a Protestant, merely required a professed belief in God.

These established state churches continued as late as 1833. That's almost 50 years after the Constitution was ratified! The Founding Fathers were careful not to step on this right of the states to choose their own religion. They even spelled it out in the federal agreement between the states, promising that Congress would never try to usurp their power by establishing its own national religion. They also promised that the federal government would never pass a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So, instead of a separation of church and state, there is a clear protection of religious expression outlined in the United States Constitution. The separation is clearly between the states and the federal government. Don't get me wrong. I think having a state religion in any of our states today is a bad idea, but the Constitution clearly leaves that decision up to the individual states, not the federal government. That's why all these rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court on local school matters, like having prayers at ball games, are a violation of the very Constitution they swear to uphold.

Knowing all that, the obvious question is, Where did we get all this "separation" business to start with? How did we get from point A to point B, only to look back and find ourselves so far away from original intent? The problem can be summed up in one phrase: legal precedence. Instead of basing rulings on the Constitution, the Supreme Court oftentimes bases its rulings on prior Supreme Court rulings. What inevitably happens is that we find ourselves incrementally further and further away from original intent until the rulings bear little resemblance to what our nation's founders had in mind. The point where we jumped the track on this separation-of-church-and-state issue can probably be traced back to a Supreme Court ruling in 1947.

In Everson v. Board of Education, Justice Hugo Black opined that the First Amendment forbids any interaction between church and government. He said that Jefferson's "wall [of separation] ... must be kept high and impregnable." That was a reference to President Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Baptists in Danbury, Conn. The state religion in Connecticut at the time was Congregationalism, and they had petitioned the president for aid in religious disestablishment, which Jefferson himself had advocated as governor of Virginia. The Danbury Baptists were disappointed when President Jefferson failed to intervene on the grounds that the federal government was strictly forbidden from interfering in state matters.

Although Jefferson used the phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" in that letter to the Danbury Baptists, you have to look at the letter in context. The full statement reads, "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." The "State" to which he referred is clearly Congress, which he calls the "legislature." And, of course, he's right. The First Amendment clearly prohibits Congress from getting involved in the establishment of a national religion, and the reason is obvious. Congress is prohibited from doing so because that right was reserved for the states and the states alone.

It's also interesting and instructive to note that this president, who is so widely quoted regarding his "wall of separation" did absolutely nothing to help the Danbury Baptists with their plight.

Jefferson's inaction on this matter is a distinct indication that he regarded this as a state matter, not a federal one. Furthermore, advocates for wiping our government clean of religion read too much into the Establishment Clause. There's nothing mysterious about it. The framers of the Constitution weren't writing in code. They meant, literally, that Congress shall not establish a religion. In other words, Congress doesn't have the power to pass a law making Catholicism the official national religion.

"Oh, but they must have meant something more," these advocates insist. No! If they'd meant more, they would've said more. If they'd meant that state legislatures had no business establishing state religions they would've said, "Neither Congress nor the state legislatures shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion." But they most unambiguously did not. Congress is the only entity restrained by the Establishment Clause. Not state legislatures. Not local school boards. Congress.

Other Jeffersonian writings

It should also be noted that, even though Thomas Jefferson was a bright guy and a deep thinker, he had nothing whatsoever to do with framing the Constitution. He was the Declaration of Independence guy, remember? During the time that the Constitution was being drafted and debated, Jefferson was in Paris as ambassador to France. But, since Jefferson is the Founding Father of choice on this issue, just for grins, let's take a look at some of his words of wisdom on the subject.

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." He also said, "If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence." That, of course, was an obvious reference to the Revolutionary War, which he regarded as a war ordained by God. Surely this was not something uttered by a man who was anti-religion.

However, knowing that individual states had their own laws regarding religion in holding office, it is instructive to see how Jefferson felt about states' rights, too. He wrote in 1791, "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' [X Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

Once Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists is understood in the context of his reasoning regarding the federal government's limited role in affairs of the states, it becomes quite clear that he never intended to extract religion from public life. The fact that he attended a religious service at the Capitol the very day he wrote his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists is itself a testament to that. No doubt Thomas Jefferson would be appalled by the way his words have been twisted to make him the poster child for the separation-of-church-and-state movement.

Valentine continues the chapter with a scathing critique of what he calls "Separationists."

Read yesterday's excerpt

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