(LifeSiteNews) — After becoming our nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.
The church elders expressed “great satisfaction” that Jefferson had been raised up to the “the chief magistracy in the United States.” They also shared their concern about a vagueness they sensed in the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom.
Jefferson sought to reassure them that the First Amendment guaranteed that an American “owes account to none other for his faith or his worship” — that there was “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
This famous phrase resonates down to today, though in different ways.
Some point to it as proof that in the United States each person is free to worship and believe as individual conscience dictates. Some are relieved that no one must submit to a government-enforced religion. Others, however, have insisted that Jefferson’s “wall of separation” restricts churches and clergy from getting involved in politics.
This erroneous interpretation has been repeated so often that many people assume it must be true. Yet the “wall of separation” was purely a metaphor by which Jefferson sought to express the effects of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. No reference to a “wall of separation” exists in any of our founding documents.
The idea has made a dandy bludgeon, however. Religious leaders have long been discouraged from speaking about issues to which certain factions don’t want Judeo-Christian moral principles applied (abortion is the prime example of that).
How often have you heard that churches must steer clear of politics or risk losing tax exemption?
On the other hand, it’s been an extremely flexible doctrine. Black churches served as the headquarters of numerous marches, political campaigns, and voter registration drives back during the Civil Rights Movement. Their tax status was never at risk.
Inconsistency aside, the practical effect of minimizing religious influence on civic life has been to bring society to a condition much like that postulated by German philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche. He asserted that “God is dead,” by which he meant that faith and morals are no longer relevant.
This assumption was demonstrated clearly during the COVID lockdowns, when religious services were suspended.
Meeting material need was recognized as essential, so Walmart remained open. Addressing spiritual hunger? Not so much. Consequently, churches were closed.
That faith leaders acquiesced to this totally unconstitutional directive was a mistake, the impact of which is still being felt. Church attendance has declined by as much as 20 percent since and shows little sign of recovering.
This gives an enormous boost to the dominance of secular values over faith and religiously informed conscience, a trend that had long been underway, but was greatly accelerated by the pandemic.
The “wall of separation” idea has been promoted by two critical institutions within society: the press and the schools.
Legacy media, which once strived to maintain a measure of objectivity — in its image, if not always in its actual practice — has lost credibility through increasing (and increasingly blatant) editorializing and propagation of “fake news.” Meanwhile, schools (in particular public schools) have become virtual indoctrination camps, immersing young people in leftist fantasies of environmental disaster, racial bitterness, and gender confusion, while effectively cleansing faith from academic life.
Both the media and the schools are hotbeds of religious rejection. Unbelief and church hatred have undermined these mechanisms on which society depends to transmit essential life information, to pass on the heritage vital to keeping civilization stable, and to prepare the next generation to take on responsibility for its care.
The result is a failure that’s having its effect in the social destruction we’re witnessing all around us.
Churches must defend truth and the reality that God’s law supersedes human intention. When the mythical “wall of separation” excludes Judeo-Christian values from the public square, when faith and morality have no influence, society crumbles.
We believers must insist that our faith leaders challenge this persistent myth. And we must stand behind them when they’re bludgeoned for championing God and defending religious freedom. Our future as a nation depends on it.