Church, State, and Santorum

By David K. Shipler

Given the history of religious persecution in colonial America, not to mention elsewhere in today’s world, it’s hard to think why Rick Santorum and his acolytes would so zealously wish to undermine what President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 called the Constitution’s “wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson coined the famous, controversial phrase in answer to a worried letter from leaders of the Baptist minority in Connecticut, where religious freedom was not an inherent right but merely a privilege granted by the legislature—one that could be withdrawn.

It had also been Baptists, in Virginia, who had inspired the First Amendment. Baptist preachers there had been jailed at the behest of the Anglican Church, and the growing Baptist voting bloc feared oppression by the fledgling federal government. Their leaders pressed a certain congressional candidate in 1788—James Madison—to abandon his ambivalence about amending the new Constitution. Madison hadn’t seen the need for amendments spelling out specific rights, but he did see a need for votes in a tough election. We know the result: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”


That people of religious faith campaigned for this provision is perfectly understandable in light of the colonists’ experiences. Although the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government at the time, not the states, it struck a chord. Every right that was articulated had derived from its violation, either in the colonies, in England, or in the broader history of torture and condemnation without due process.

Most of the colonies were established to promote particular denominations, as Steven Waldman documents in his book, Founding Faith. Virginia deported “Popish priests,” forbade the entry of Quakers, banished Puritan clergy and Jews, and denied Catholics the right to hold office unless they took an oath to the Church of England. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were also anti-Puritan, dominated by the Church of England.

New England, by contrast, favored the Puritans and their Congregational Church and made it illegal to be a Quaker. In Massachusetts—where the Puritans viewed church and state as intertwined—Quakers were whipped and hanged. Only members of Congregational churches could vote, not Catholics, Jews, or others.

Maryland was "established explicitly as a refuge for Catholics," Waldman notes. It tolerated Protestants but prescribed the death penalty for anyone who did not believe in Jesus Christ. When Protestants took over the government, they granted the Church of England official status and paid for churches and clergy with taxes. Catholics were barred in 1700 from inheriting or buying land. Priests were sentenced to life in prison. Catholic worship was prohibited in 1704, and, as Waldman reports, a Maryland law in 1715 required children of a mixed marriage to be removed from a Catholic mother if her Protestant husband died. In 1718, Catholics were denied the vote unless they swore allegiance to the Church of England.

Santorum is Catholic. He should study this history. One supposes that if human beings had made inexorable progress toward enlightened tolerance during the last three hundred years, we would have nothing to fear from mixing religious faith and governmental power. But all you have to do is look around the world—at Egypt and Iraq, at Israel and Sudan, and even inside American attitudes—to see how dangerous it would be to mingle church and state.

It could be argued that the country has come a long way, given that a Catholic presidential candidate can forget the anti-Catholic bigotry that propelled John F. Kennedy half a century ago to reassure voters, in his speech celebrating the wall of separation, that he would not be taking orders from the pope. At the time, many Americans were afraid that the hierarchical church would dictate a Catholic president’s policies. Kennedy declared categorically, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

That this affirmation of a founding principle makes Santorum want to “throw up” might indicate that today’s America is well past its own history, that this society has extinguished the impulses of divine certainty that drive one religion to elevate its truth over another’s—in other words, that people have achieved the nirvana of open-minded acceptance for the vast array of difference and diversity in the American landscape.

Luckily, we don’t have to take that gamble as long as we have a Constitution.