What the ‘Wall of Separation’ Means for Democracy
Stephen McGuinness discusses the impact of secularism in France and the United States.
Thomas Jefferson ... proponent of secularism
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from the Danbury Baptists thanking him for defending religious freedom through his championing of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1802, he published his reply:
Believing with you that religion is a matter 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 actions only, 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.
This phrase, ‘wall of separation’, set the tone for the way in which the United States has since approached the relationship between Church and State. In many Supreme Court decisions, this phrase has been used by the Justices (for example, Justice Black in Everson v. Board of Education (1947)) to justify that the First Amendment itself has built this wall of separation between Church and State.
The wall of separation between Church and State is part of a process in politics known as secularisation.
It characterises the way in which society sees this Church and State relationship. France, a very similar democracy, is also secularising its society. However, while the end goal of a ‘wall of separation’ between Church and State is common, the reason and approach is very different. In both states, secularism is manifested differently and in neither does it necessarily enhance the quality of democracy.
In its most literal sense, secularism is nothing more than non-religion; indeed, many popular views of secularism involve this idea of neutrality. For example, a secular book is not a book that is anti-religion, but one that neither supports nor opposes certain religious views. A secular book will not mention anything religious at all. In today’s usage, secularism is the privatisation of the religious. In other words, religion is fine for the individual, but it has no place in the public sphere. Thus, as Don Carson argues in his book Christ and Culture Revisited, “if religion makes any claims regarding policy in the public arena, it is viewed as a threat, and intolerant as well”.
In a democracy, where there is a plurality of actors and voices, the secularist therefore argues that the Church’s particular voice on, say, abortion is, first, irrelevant (what would the Church know about the running of government?) and, secondly, intolerant (what gives the Church the right to regulate in this area?) Secularism argues that only certain (non-religious and thus neutral) voices have relevance in the public sphere, and thus ensures that there is a distinct wall of separation between the religious and the public spheres.
However, it must be noted that it is not merely anti-Christians who take this view; there are Christians who can be described as secularist too. Depending on how you interpret Jesus’ words “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”, it is possible for a Christian to say that Caesar has his sphere, and God has His sphere, and that the two are entirely separate. Indeed, the most obvious example is the Amish, who withdraw from society to ensure that the separation is as complete as possible. In another way, Darryl G. Hart claims that there must be a difference between what the Church has to say as the Church and Christian involvement in the political sphere. As Carson describes, Hart “goes further and insists that even Christians (as opposed to the Church) should not make their political and cultural appeals on Christian grounds”. (Emphasis added)
In the United States, secularism and the wall of separation grew out of the country’s reaction to European, especially British, state religion. States like England and Scotland have state churches: The Church of England, today known as the Anglican Church, which has the Queen as its head. The American First Amendment, in some respects, aimed to prevent this situation from arising and to protect religion from the State. For American democracy, the wall of separation is best characterised as a freedom for religion.
The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Jefferson, in his hometown of Virginia, drafted the 1779 Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, placing all faiths on the same footing. According to the First Amendment, Congress could not affect this. At the same time, Jefferson’s rival, John Adams, was drafting the Massachusetts Constitution, which saw religious freedom as being best served by balancing the freedom of many private religions with one legally established public religion, which Congress also could not affect.
In this context, the Danbury Baptists sent their letter to Jefferson thanking him for his work in preserving their religious freedom. In Connecticut, the majority denomination was Congregationalist, not Baptist, and having a State religion would thus have been against their interests. Since then, Jefferson’s phrase and its use in interpreting the First Amendment have led to the U.S. being very specific and cautious with the way government funds are spent, especially with respect to institutions like schools, which often receive endowments from religious sources.
For example, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the State was accused of aiding a religious organisation when it used taxpayer money to help cover transportation costs to private schools, some of which were Catholic. Despite finding that the State had done nothing wrong, Justice Black maintained that “[i]n the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between Church and State’.”
Secularism in the United States is a top-down approach that assures that the state does not interfere with religion. The wall of separation is designed to maintain the neutrality of the government with regard to the variety of faiths of its constituents. Yet in France, the wall is designed to be for freedom from religion. In contrast with the United States, secularism in France is a bottom-up approach that ensures that religion does not invade the public sphere and thus impact upon public policy.
The reason for this is historical. Leading up to the French Revolution, the First Estate (the clergy) was one of the three parties of influence in the Estates-General and was the largest landowner in France. During the Revolution itself, there was a shift in power away from the Church to the State: much of the Church’s land was confiscated, monastic vows were abolished, and the clergy were integrated within the State as civil servants. Eventually, this was formalised in the 1905 Law of the Separation of Churches and the State, establishing state secularism (la laïcité) in France.
Secularism in France goes further than in the U.S., where the primary focus is on limiting state activities. Religious meetings cannot use public university campus facilities. While a Christian group may be able to conduct a Bible study on the grounds that it is academic in nature, a service or worship is explicitly religious and is thus banned on the grounds of laïcité. As recently as 2004, France passed a law banning “conspicuous religious symbols” in schools. The ban applied not only to the Islamic hijab, but also such things as Christian crosses and the Jewish yarmulke.
Using this description of secularism as it has developed in France and the United States, it can be argued that such manifestations are actually counter-intuitive to liberal democracy. Theoretically, all voices have an equal right to be heard in a liberal democracy. Yet secularism silences the religious voice, claiming that it is either intolerant, or simply irrelevant. Religious voices should not always be so categorically dismissed. In October 2006, Kevin Rudd wrote an article entitled Faith in Politics, reflecting on the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who had been involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Rudd made the point that the Church has a very prominent role in the politics of a nation. He argued:
Bonhoeffer’s political theology is therefore one of a dissenting church that speaks truth to the state, and does so by giving voice to the voiceless. Its domain is the village, not the interior life of the chapel. Its core principle is to stand in defence of the defenceless or, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, of those who are “below”.
Arguably, religion has quite a bit to say in the political realm and thus should not be dismissed as irrelevant. It can serve as the moral conscience that speaks out, sometimes for others, at other times in defence of itself. In the context of Christianity, Christians are actually called to participate in government. In a democracy, Christians must participate in the democratic process, being a voice in the community and praying for their governments.
Secularism has the aim of removing religion from the political sphere, claiming irrelevance or intolerance. In the United States and France, secularism manifests itself differently because of differing historical contexts. Yet in a democracy, this silencing of the religious voice is contrary to the (theoretical) aim of democracy – of allowing all voices to participate in the political decisions that affect them.
