In fact, the separation of cult and state IS something quintessentially American.
Americans invented the idea, after all…
In a conference call
posted online
Rick Santorum said separation of cult and state is a Communist idea
and has no place in our thinking. What started the Great Lie rolling was
a caller’s comments:
[A] number of the
things that the far left, a.k.a. the Democrat [sic] Party, and the
president is pushing for and accomplishing actually accomplishes a
number of the tenets of ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ including the
amnesty, the elevation of pornography, homosexuality, gay marriage,
voter fraud, open borders, mass self-importation of illegal immigrants
and things of that nature. So I think that’s a huge cause for concern
that would raise a number of red flags for any politician…
Obviously, pornography and homosexuality and gay marriage etc. are
not in
The Communist Manifesto.
The word “homosexual” itself, while it is 19th century pathology, was
not first used in print until 1869, twenty-one years after The Communist
Manifesto was written. The caller had – in typical wingnut fashion
– not actually read the book he was complaining about, and Rick
Santorum had likewise not read it, or – also in typical wingnut
fashion – was willing to pretend the book said something it did not say.
Whatever his reasons, Santorum told the caller,
“The words ‘separation of church and state’ is not
in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former
Soviet Union. That’s where it very, very comfortably sat, not in ours.”
Take a listen courtesy of
Right Wing Watch if you can’t endure the entire call via the link above:
No, the actual words “separation of church and
state” are not there, but the separation is there by virtue of the First
Amendment, which forbids the establishment of a state religion. If the
state cannot “establish” religion, then of necessity, church and state
are separate.
And
then there is the not so small issue that the words “wall of separation
between church and state” were used by Thomas Jefferson on January 1,
1802, in his famous
letter to the Danbury baptists:
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 cult and state.
That is not the only time Jefferson wrote of church and state. He
wrote to Charles Clay in 1815, of the “loathsome combination of cult and state.”
And James Madison, who is known as the Father of the Constitution,
wrote to Robert Walsh in 1819
that “the morality of the priesthood & the devotion of the people
have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the cult
from the State.”
Strongly guarded as is
the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the
United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may
be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.
Jefferson and Madison were both Americans. Neither was a Communist.
Jefferson was right to fear ecclesiastical bodies,
as the religio-wingnuts are now seeking to accomplish what the Founding
Fathers fought so hard to prohibit.
Religion and government
are equally necessary, but their interests should be kept separate and
distinct. No legitimate connection can ever subsist between them. Upon
no plan, no system, can they become united, without endangering the
purity and usefulness of both—the church will corrupt the state, and the
state pollute the church. christianity becomes no longer the religion
of dog—it becomes the religion of temporal craft and expediency and
policy. Instead of being the sacred guide to lead mankind to heaven, it
becomes the prostituted instrument of private cupidity and personal
ambition.
In fact, far from being un-American, the separation of cult and state is something quintessentially American. Americans invented the idea, after all, unlike mom, apple pie, and the flag. From America, it has spread to other nations.
And Communism? Modern Communism, the type Santorum
is familiar with, came about as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Before that, we could speak of the Bolsheviks, whom we can date to
1902. Before that we can talk about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and
The Communist Manifesto of 1848, which introduced to the world the idea
that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles.”
Obviously, Thomas Jefferson was unfamiliar with all this. Marx was 8 when Jefferson died in 1826.
It did not take atheistic Communism to banish
religion from government. That was already accomplished by the Founding
Fathers by way of Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which
forbids religious tests for public office, and the Constitution’s First
Amendment, which clearly forbids the establishment of a state religion.
One might call the separation of church and state America’s contribution
to the European Enlightenment.
The First Amendment’s wall of separation was, in a
way, the final act severing the New World from the Old World’s long
history of religious wars and oppression. And if anything here is
un-American, it is Rick Santorum and the religio-wingnuts which spawned
him, for seeking to undo an essential component of that American recipe
for religious freedom that is the Founders’ legacy not only to us, but
the world.
