A Rhode Island judge understands government neutrality regarding religion to be the perennial and the best policy that a civic administration should maintain toward a nation’s faith life.
In the light of this recent decision, a young lady in Cranston exalts that the United States is juridically and definitively a secular state. Yet while the federal government has been wisely and happily neutral concerning America’s churches, the same federal government has been (until recently) gently and enduringly favorable toward religion. By constitutional decree, America has never had an established church. But in general practice, America has, even governmentally, been undeniably and moderately religious.
Early presidents called for national days of prayer and fasting in reaction to various calamities. Even today Thanksgiving and Christmas are legal holidays. Our presidents and civil officials are sworn into office with their hand on a Bible or, rarely, on another sacred text. The U.S. Supreme Court is convened daily with the plea, “God save this honorable court.” Courts have required witnesses to testify to the truth with hand on the Bible and with the oath, “So help me God.” Americans pledge that they are a “nation under God” and use currency professing trust “in God.” Chaplains are regularly employed at Congress and the military’s religious needs are satisfied by paid chaplains. Conscientious objection on religious grounds is a long-standing American tradition. Many nonprofit agencies are not taxed on the theory that their organizations serve the public. American church buildings, synagogues and houses of prayer are not taxed even though their sacred space serves, not the public, but their own religious constituencies (soup kitchens in the parish hall notwithstanding).
While the separation of church and state has a constitutional basis in the First Amendment, the separation of society and religion has neither constitutional nor historical foundation. In fact, just the opposite is true. Hollywood, MTV and the ACLU aside, the United States is one of the world’s most religious nations. Only four percent of American citizens style themselves atheists. And although the other 96 percent might not be in church every Sunday, they accept the existence of God, they do pray, they believe certain aspects of the supernatural and most look forward to heaven.
The Stokes trial in the 1920s during which an eager press mockingly pitted creation versus evolution did little to affect the American soul. Until the middle of the last century and the advent of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, the religious overtones of American society were taken for granted. Bland religious observances in daily American life – prayer at graduations, Nativity scenes on the village green, invocations and benedictions at public events – testified to the broad Protestant consensus that passed for a civic religion in America. Catholics, Jews, and other minorities found common ground in this generic religiosity, settling for “nature’s God” in public knowing they could embrace Jesus, YHWH, and other deities in private.
For most of its history, the United States has been gently favorable toward religion – not toward a particular church but toward religion in general. Now the call has come for American neutrality toward religion – again, not neutrality toward a particular church, which has always been the case, but neutrality toward all religion, which had never been the case. There is a valid argument that religion has thrived in America precisely because it has had to fend for itself with no government assistance. The established churches of Europe are moribund because they relied more on governmental subsidies than on evangelical zeal. Yet while public religious expression was never been subsidized in America, neither was it discouraged. Neutrality toward religion in public life is a novel concept departing from the deistic aspirations of our enlightened Founding Fathers whose First Amendment concern was broadly to protect religious expression not censor it.
America tampers with its religious heritage at its own peril. Author Rodney Stark in “The Triumph of Christianity” quotes one of China’s leading economists: “… in the past 20 years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.” Nor should we.
