From:Bob Eyer (1:250/710)
>It is. Puritan governmental practices show that they called for a
>separation of church and state, on the grounds that running the
>state was a nasty business that the church ought not be involved
>in.
I don't know where you get these ideas; but I think you'll have
a great deal of trouble convincing scholars of the Salem witch
trials that Puritan Massachusetts was not involved in the
Establishment of religion. The Puritan Massachusetts School law
of 1647 explicitly declared as its object the colony's
opposition to the influences of Satan:
It being one chiefe project of ye ould deluder, Satan, to keepe
men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in former times by
keeping ym in an unknowne tongue, so in these latter times by
perswading from ye use of tongues, yet so at least ye true
sence & meaning of ye originall might be clouded by false
glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yet learning may not be
buried in ye grave of our fathers in ye church and
commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, --
It is therefore ordered, yet every towneship in this
jurisdiction, after ye Lord hath increased ym number to 50
housholders, shall then forthwith appoint ...
[Massachusetts School Law of 1647, quoted in Henry Steele
Commager and Milton Cantor, eds., Documents of American
History Volume I to 1898. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,
1988, p.29]
The following year in 1648 a synod of the Congregational Church
issued what is known as the Cambridge Platform, Chapter 17, Point
8 of which stated, and I quote:
8. Idolatry, Blasphemy, Heresy, venting corrupt & pernicious
opinions, that destroy the foundation, open contempt of the
word preached, prophanation of the Lords day, disturbing the
peaceable administration & exercise of the worship & holy
things of God, & the like, are to be restrayned, & punished
by civil authority.
[The Cambridge Platform, in Commager and Cantor, supra, p.31]
This Platform was adopted by the legislature of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay in 1651.
>The phrase "separation of church and state" is not used, of
Nor could it have been. That phrase originated from Thomas
Jefferson, more than a century later than the time of the
foundation of those institutions which made the rule of the
Puritans (slang for the Congregational Church) in Massachusetts so
notorious.
The matter of Jefferson's phrase, as I mentioned previously, was
referred to in Everson v Board, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). And now I see
that the reference occurred on page 16 of that decision, which in
turn referred back to Reynolds v United States (1879), the Supreme
Court decision in which federal laws against polygamy in the
Territories were ruled constitutional after challenge on religious
grounds by persons from the Utah Territory.
Some years after Congress passed the Religion Clauses of the 1st
Amendment (September 1789), the Danbury Baptist Association wrote
to Jefferson asking for clarification of the new clauses; and he
wrote back,
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 legislative powers of the
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. Adhering to this expression of the supreme
will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I
shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those
sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights,
convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social
duties.
[quoted in Reynolds v United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164 (1879)]
Jefferson's phrase thus actually was "a wall of separation
between church and State" (using the capital letter "S" on
'state'), rather than "separation of church and state".
The difference to the uninitiated here is nugatory; but American
constitutional experts know that, when 'State' begins with a
capital letter in American constitutional jurisprudence (other
than for the reason that the word begins a sentence), the word
refers to the government of a member of the American Union--it
does not refer to the federal government. Only the lower-case
"state" refers to governments in general in American
jurisprudence.
This is the real reason why the Court in Everson, cited above,
referred to that letter of Jefferson's, as provided to American
constitutional law in the Reynolds decision. The Court's purpose
was to lend credibility to its first application of the
Establishment Clause against State action under the 14th
Amendment.
>course, as you point out. While the state might have fostered the
>church, the Puritans were not interested in "corrupting" the
>church by having its ministers also be heads of state.
Well, once again, I think you need evidence to support this claim,
especially as to dates, the particular instruments you're
referring to, where published, and so on. All the historians I've
read on this subject make clear that, although the
Congregationalists in Massachusetts apologised in the first years
of the 18th century to the other Colonies for the egregious
scandal of the Puritan Massachusetts witch trials up to the last
decade of the 17th century, they did not reform their laws until
much later--indeed, not until the 19th century. The
Congregationalists in Massachusetts did not even tail the Great
Awakening on the issue of church and state; much less did they
lead it.
It is highly implausible that the Puritans advocated any such
thing as might be equivalent to a separation of church and state
until well after the Baptists had taken the leadership on the
issue during the second half of the 18th century. But the
critical issue here is not about what the Puritans advocated and
when; rather, it is when the laws of Massachusetts repealed the
old religious establishment legislation originally induced by the
Puritans during the mid-17th century (see quotes above).
The Massachusetts Bill of Rights, dated 1780, makes perfectly
clear that the Massachusetts legislature, under the influence of
the fanatical Massachusetts Congregationalists, had done virtually
nothing about the general idea of a separation of church and
state, even at a late stage of the Revolutionary War:
As the happiness of a people and the good order and
preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety,
religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally
diffused through a community but by the institution of the
public worship of God and of public instructions, in piety,
religion, and morality. Therefore to promote their happiness
and secure the good order and preservation of their government,
the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their
legislature with power to authorize and require, and the
legislature shalol from time to time authorize and require, the
several towns ... and other bodies--politic or religious
societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense,
for the institution of the public worship of God and the
support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety,
religion, and morality. ... And the people of this
commonwealth ... do invest their legislature with authority to
enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the
instructions of the public teachers aforesaid. ...
[Article II of the Bill, quoted in Steele and Commager,
supra, pp.107-108]
Even the Constitution of Vermont, established in 1777, was more
progressive than this on the religion issue.
Bob
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