Standing Up for Separation of Church and State

This got screwed up the frist tiem so I am resending:

PART I

In my email this morning:

From: "Kent Holland"
To: <jalison.TakeThisOut@cox.net>
Subject: New article on Separation of Church and State -
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 17:50:29 -0400

You are welcome to link to a new article that I wrote on the subject of
separation of church and state. It is written from a Christian perspective
strongly supporting the wall of separation, and attempting to show Baptists
that their history has been to support this wall rather than tear it down
as some Baptists are currently attempting to do. The link is
http://www.kentholland.com/articles/separation.htm.

Sincerely,

Kent Holland
==========================================================
Copyright ©, 2004, J. Kent Holland, Jr., McLean, VA
Permission for copying and posting this paper for use in other publications
and websites, with attribution to the author, is hereby granted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Standing Up for Separation of Church and State is the Spiritual (and
Historically Baptist) Thing to Do

By: J. Kent Holland, Jr., J.D.
Kent.TakeThisOut@KentHolland.com
http://www.KentHolland.com
Copyright ©, 2004, J. Kent Holland, Jr., McLean, VA
___________________________________________________
Table of Contents
I. Baptists' Early History of Support for Religious Liberty and
Separation of Church and State
II. Some Key Southern Baptist and Evangelical Christian Leaders
Want to Tear Down the Wall of Separation
III. Many Baptist Organizations Still Stand Firm for Separation
of Church and State
IV. Government Support for Religion Backfires against
Judeo-Christian Religions
V. Ten Commandments in Government Buildings
VI. Pledge of Allegiance – "One Nation under God."
VII. Faith-Based Grants
A. Treating Faith-Based Grant Recipients More Leniently
than Other Grantees
B. Grant Funding will Equalize Religious Organizations
C. What happens if the Grant Recipient Fails to
prove it Satisfied the Conditions of the Grant?
D. Religious Organizations should not Seek Federal Grant
Funds
VIII. Exercising Spiritual Conscience in the Political Arena
IX. Conclusion
X. Hypotheticals for Contemplation and Discussion
_______________________________________________________

I. Baptists' Early History of Support for Religious Liberty and Separation
of Church and State

What is the history of Baptists standing up for religious
liberty in America ? When Baptists emigrated from England to America to
escape persecution by the state sponsored Church of England, it was not
long before they found the same kind of persecution in the colonies, many
of which established an official religion.
The Baptists argued consistently for religious liberty both in
England and in the colonies. Baptists came to believe fervently in the
separation of church and state -- at least in part because of their own
persecution. At the heart of Baptist faith and practice is the Baptist
belief in the individual's direct relationship to God through the liberty
of the soul to choose faith. If relationship with God is one of personal
choice and faith, based upon one's own conscience, then king, government,
bishop, priest, or even a church, cannot make decisions on an individual's
behalf, intervene for an individual or in any way mediate between man and
God. With that fundamental belief, Baptists must logically stand for
religious liberty, insisting that an individual alone can make spiritual
decisions impacting his or her relationship with God.
The Baptist call for religious liberty has always gone far
beyond religious "tolerance" that posits that one religion can be more
accepted by government so long as it tolerates the existence of others
without persecution. In contrast to "tolerance," the notion of "liberty"
is that all people are equally free to choose or reject any religious
belief and no religion or belief system will be favored by the government
over any other. "Baptists distinguished religious liberty and religious
freedom as belonging to all persons as persons and not to Christianity or
to people of a particular brand of Christianity."[i]
An example of the Baptist position is seen from a debate that
occurred in the year 1784, concerning the use of tax dollars to fund
programs run by religious organizations. In that year, a bill was
introduced in the Virginia General Assembly to provide a tax to support
teachers of religion, with each person being allowed to designate which
religious teacher his assessment would support.[ii] James Madison made the
following observation during the debate of the proposed legislation, "The
Episcopal clergy are generally for it. . . . The Presbyterians seem as
ready to set up an establishment which would take them in as they were to
pull one down which shut them out. The Baptists, however, standing firmly
by their avowed principle of the complete separation of church and state,
declared it to be ‘repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel for the
Legislature thus to proceed on matters of religion that no human laws ought
to be established for the purpose.'" [iii]
Virginia Baptists strongly objected when the Federal
Constitution was written without an inclusion of religious liberty. John
Leland, a candidate for the Virginia ratifying convention and a prominent
Baptist who had was leading the fight for religious liberty, apparently
dropped his candidacy and gave his support instead to James Madison in
exchange for a commitment that Madison would join with Leland in a crusade
to amend the draft Constitution to guarantee religious liberty, free
speech, and a free press.
At the Constitutional Convention, the amendment sought by John
Leland was not made. It is possible that Madison concluded that if
religious liberty were included in the Constitution, the colonies of
Massachusetts and other states might not ratify it. In any event, history
shows that John Leland and the Baptists didn't give up the fight. By
letter dated 1789, Leland wrote to President Washington requesting that a
guarantee of religious liberty be added to the Constitution. President
Washington replied assuring Leland that such a guarantee would be provided.
Shortly thereafter, James Madison presented the First Amendment and it was
enacted. It has been said that "If the researchers of the world were asked
who was most responsible for the American guarantee for religious liberty,
their prompt reply would be ‘James Madison'; but if James Madison might
answer, he would as quickly reply, ‘John Leland and the Baptists.'"[iv]

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Although the term "Separation of Church and State" does not
appear in these words of the First Amendment, it is clear that such
separation was intended from the context in which the amendment was enacted
and from statements and correspondence by the Founding Fathers. In reply
to an 1801 letter from the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut ,
Thomas Jefferson wrote on January 1, 1802 :

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 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.[v]

Jefferson 's "wall of separation" metaphor was specifically
accepted as the constitutional standard by the United States Supreme Court
in 1947 in the case of Everson v. Board of Education. In that case the
court held: "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and
state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable." Most importantly,
the Supreme Court in this case held that Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment applied to individual states by virtue of the due process clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment.
At the time the U.S. Constitution was written, some colonies
had established official religions and were actively persecuting members of
other religions. With the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights that immediately followed, the Founding Fathers made an affirmative
decision to disestablish religion and specifically to protect the free
exercise of religion. Although the Founding Fathers may have been godly
men, and many of them may have been Christians, they deemed it important
that the United States not be a nation favoring any religion – not even a
general (non-denominational) Christian religion.
By specifically stating in the First Amendment that the
government would enact no law respecting the establishment of religion, the
Founding Fathers made it plain that the United States could not be called a
Christian nation, a Jewish nation, a Muslim Nation, a Hindu nation, or a
nation based upon any other religion. It does not matter what religions
the Founding Fathers themselves may have had. All that matters is that
they did not impose their religions upon the nation. Thus, even if it can
be argued that the Founding Fathers were Christians, and even if it can be
argued that they based fundamental tenants of the Declaration of
Independence and Constitution on Christian or Judeo-Christian principles,
it does not logically follow that the Nation itself was founded as a
Christian or Judeo-Christian nation.
With the subsequent passage of the 14th amendment it became
clear that this disestablishment of religion and the newfound freedom of
religion also appliedle to the individual states.
II. Some Key Southern Baptist and Evangelical Christian Leaders
Want to Tear Down the Wall of Separation

There are today some well publicized voices among a few key
evangelical leaders, Baptist leaders and pastors that have turned their
back on religious liberty and the principle of separation of church and
state.[vi] In criticizing the Supreme Court's Everson v. Board of
Education decision, for example, the authors at Christian Law Organization
argue "It is this Supreme Court case that stands in the way of individual
states passing legislation that favors religion. The Everson decision is a
clear departure from the view of the Founding Fathers. The First Amendment
was not intended to stop the states from establishing a church or favoring
a particular religion."[vii] Apparently the Christians that operate
Christian Law. Org would like to see individual states enact laws favoring
religion – presumably their own version of protestant Christian religion.
There is most certainly more than one outspoken Baptist
critical of the notion of separation of church and state. Jerry Falwell,
for example, whose church is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention,
has this to say about the First Amendment and the separation of church and
state:

Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped
the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the
founders had in mind in the First Amendment of the Constitution…. [W]e must
fight against those radical minorities who are trying to remove God from
our textbooks, Christ from our nation. We must never allow our children to
forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is
rightfully ours."[viii]

Falwell is also quoted as saying:

Separation of Church and State has long been the battle cry of
civil libertarians wishing to purge our glorious Christian heritage from
our nation's history. Of course, the term never once appears in our
Constitution and is a modern fabrication of discrimination.[ix]

TV Evangelist and one-time presidential candidate, Pat Robertson is perhaps
the most vocal in his disdain for the concept of separation of church and
state. Among his statements are the following:

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
church and state.[x]

It's amazing that the Constitution of the United States says nothing about
the separation of church and state. That phrase does appear, however, in
the Soviet Constitution, which says the sate shall be separate from the
church and church from the school. People in the educational
establishment, and in our judicial establishment, have attempted to impose
Soviet strictures on the United States , and have done so successfully,
even though they are not part of our Constitution.[xi]

The above statements were made by Pat Robertson in 1996.[xii] In each year
since then he has been quoted making equally astounding remarks. In 2002
he stated:

We have had a distortion imposed on us over the past few years by
left-wingers who have fastened themselves into the court system. And we
have had a lie foisted on us that there is something embedded in the
Constitution called separation of church and state.[xiii]

James Dobson, another well-known speaker, writer, counselor and
evangelist, has spoken out against the belief that the concept of
separation of church and state is to be found in the Constitution. He is
quoted as saying: "Again, the phantom ‘separation of church and state'
clause was cited as the justification" for the courts striking down school
voucher laws.[xiv]

James Kennedy, another well-known evangelist has weighed in against the
separation of church and state as follows:

If we are committed and involved in taking back the nation for Christian
moral values, and if we are willing to risk the scorn of the secular media
and the bureaucracy that stand against us, there is no doubt we can witness
the dismantling of not just the Berlin Wall but the even more diabolical
‘wall of separation' that has led to increasing secularization,
godlessness, immorality, and corruption in our country.[xv]

The Southern Baptist Convention has broken with, and removed
their financial support for, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs
which actively supports the separation of church and state. Increasingly,
Southern Baptists are siding with those who want to tear down the wall of
separation. Many Southern Baptists now are seeking government support for
school prayers, faith-based grants to religious organizations, and
government funding for church-run schools. They view separation of church
and state to be bad for the country and adverse to religion.
A Baptist scholar, Barry Hankins, assistant professor of
history and church-state studies at Baylor University , recently conducted
interviews of Southern Baptist leaders to assess where they stood on the
issue of separation of church and state – and why. He found that
conservative Baptists "are driven by a perception of culture that changes
the entire landscape. This is the perception that the United States today
is hostile toward any expression of religion or faith…. Hunkered down in
what they call a ‘culture war,' conservatives today are willing to downplay
concerns about the possible government establishment of religion in order
to achieve the greater good of ensuring free exercise of religion."[xvi]
Professor Hankins states that when questioned closely, conservative
Southern Baptist leaders claim to adhere to historic Baptist beliefs on
church-state separation. But in practice, they espouse a different view.
He says, "On church-state issues, this perception of culture not only
shapes their positions on religious liberty but also leads them to
virtually disregard the danger of the establishment of religion."[xvii]
Perhaps the shift in the view of some Baptists who seek to tear
down the wall of separation of church and state is partly in response and
reaction to what appears to be outright hostility against religion by the
media and much secular teaching and discourse. As stated in a joint
publication of five religious organizations,[xviii] there is a view
prevalent today that "sees religion and religious groups as having a
minimal role in – perhaps even being barred from – the vital public
discourses we carry on as a democracy. It sees involvement in the
democratic process by people of faith as violating the principle of
church-state separation. It regards religious arguments as naïve and seeks
to embarrass any who profess religious motivation for their public
positions on political issues. This view denies our country the powerful
moral guidance of our religious heritage…."[xix]