What does Separation of Church and State Really Mean?
The much-bandied about phrase “separation of church and state” means different things to different people. To those from the secular humanist persuasion, it means that the state can make no public acknowledgement of religion, have no religious displays, recognize no tax exemptions for churches, and goes so far to regulate even religious expressions of private individuals in the public arena out of line. One also hears that any attempt by others to “moralize” or use any religious values to argue for a policy should be silenced. On the other hand, there are those who believe the matter is simply that the government should not establish an official state church, or that a church should not be anointing officials in the government. Other than that, people should believe and practice how they see fit. Both sides couch their arguments on constitutional theories, some involving Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation letter.
To consider this issue, it is important to consider the historical situation of the framers and what they intended. To recap, they were declaring independence from the King of England. There is one important title for the monarch of England that is relevant to this issue, “Supreme Governor of the Church of England”. Not only was the Church of England the official state religion (and still is), but the King himself was the head of that Church. This insured that his political reach not only extended in the public realm, but from the pulpit and even into the confessional. The hierarchy of the church was subservient to the king. This led to abuses in both directions, those by the church and those by the government.
The founders did not declare independence from England because they wanted to set up a secular state. They declared independence because of a long train of abuses and usurpations of government power against its people. They were concerned about matters of tyranny, not theology. The Boston Tea Party was about taxes (and thus enshrined in American tradition the fine art of bitching about taxes) not about Baptists throwing Presbyterian’s Bibles into the Atlantic. The Declaration itself made liberal use of religion in general, as did the Founders in their public statements. Even in Jefferson’s Wall letter, he expresses religious sentiment and asks for prayers. It’s obviously clear; it isn’t religious expression they are worried about.
The choice of phrase is important, “separation of church and state”. Jefferson doesn’t say separation of religion and state. He is talking about institutionalseparation. Ireland’s official church is the Roman Catholic Church, as is Poland’s. In England, it’s the Church of England. These aren’t religions in general but specific religious institutions. No nation has “Christianity” as the official state religion for a very good reason. The reason is that there’s about 50,000 some odd flavors that run the gamut from the Mormons to the Unitarians. Some Christians say Jesus established a hierarchical church, others say he was a social activist, still others say he was an anarchist. Saying Christianity is the official state religion would border on effective meaninglessness. It wasn’t the ideas that the Founders were afraid of which is why they were perfectly free praying together and expressing religious sentiment in public documents and speeches. Institutional corruption and tyranny were there concerns.
The results of institutional-mingling of churches and governments are quite clear in history and it hasn’t been beneficial for the state or the church. However, this is a far cry from divining an intent that projects the idea that “religion is all that’s wrong with the world” upon the Founders. There was a camp among the Founders who believed that a free society required a religious people and yet still continued to allow free association between the various churches.
However, the crowd pushing separation most vigorously also is the crowd that’s trying to regulate certain religious beliefs out of existence. Pharmacists aren’t allowed to express their religious sentiments about abortion and retain their jobs. The argument is that they shouldn’t take the job if they don’t follow a pre-defined ethical construct approved by the government. Catholic hospitals are consistently fighting attempts to force them to provide abortions despite their clear religious teaching. Catholic Charities in California was required to recognize “gay marriage” despite their own beliefs. School children (a.k.a. individual citizens not to be confused with government officials) are told that they aren’t allowed to pray or have bible studies on school property. In one case, school children were threatened with federal prison if they dared utter a prayer on their own volition during a graduation ceremony. The IRS has investigated churches for preaching against abortion. In short, the wall of separation is growing to enforce a certain religious orthodoxy and not protect the free expression of religion that was also mentioned in the First Amendment.
The irony of setting up such a system where beliefs are regulated to some level of appropriate orthodoxy on issues such as abortion is that the sword cuts both ways depending on the whims of government. When right-wing churches complained about IRS harassment, the left-wing told them to stop talking about abortion instead. However, when an antiwar sermon brought the IRS, the left-wing cried foul. The problem with state regulation of religion is that its regulation will serve its own interests, usually on sale to the highest bidder. The Founders were rightly concerned about this abuse, which is why in the same breath of saying the State should establish no official religion; it should also in no way restrict reasonable expressions of religion.
Contrary to the opinion of some, the First Amendment doesn’t require regulating religion into hiding; it requires that they remain institutionally separate. The mere expression of the word “God” in a speech does not a theocracy make.
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And with so many people that can be categorized as Founding Fathers, why do we focus this debate on one phrase Thomas Jefferson wrote once? I’m fairly certain that some of those other guys wrote some stuff too.
There are so many examples of the Founders taking actions that are contrary to the current interpretation of the Establishment Clause that many of these debates should have foregone conclusions.
Comment by 4thelittleguy | January 10, 2006
Wow! That was a really good article, Mr. Bambenek. Analysis is almost always more compelling than ranting — at least from the perspective of readers.
You make some interesting points about that extremely fine — yet fuzzy and often arbitrarily defined — line between state-established religion and state regulation of religion. It’s real food for thought.
I firmly believe that First Amendment did indeed create that proverbial “wall of separation,” but I must also acknowledge that it did not specify what its dimensions should be.
230 years later, we’re still trying to figure that one out as we face the challenges of protecting and defending our traditional rights while, at the same time, recognizing previously undiscovered rights that have been revealed to us through the rapid social and technological progress of the last half century or so.
I think we’re in a transition in which we are trying to balance our traditions and heritage with the expanding diversity of our culture and philosophies.
Right now, the pendulum is swinging wildly as the extremists on both sides push it back and forth at one another. However, I remain hopeful that this process will eventually lead to a balance that respects traditional beliefs as well as new or unconventional beliefs.
These are wonderful, yet confusing, times we are living in right now and the sort of nuanced thinking that is represented in the article above is what is going to help to see us through them. Please do keep it up.
Comment by Margaret Toigo | January 13, 2006
“Pharmacists aren’t allowed to express their religious sentiments about abortion and retain their jobs.”
While I don’t agree with your larger analysis, I can’t let this sentence go without comment. I am going to assume here that you are referring to conscience clauses with regard to EC? I have trouble imagining what any sort of contraception has to do with abortion, though I have written patient letters on the subject and received patient responses from groups like Focus on the Family. It seems to boil down to a convenient redefinition of the beginning of a pregnancy. It is a heartfelt belief that a baby comes into existence at the point of fertilization, despite the disagreement on this point of the consensus of OB/GYNs. But a heartfelt belief is of little use to doctors treating women, and to scientists developing drugs. EC simply cannot cause an abortion. There are drugs that can, but combination hormones absolutely cannot.
But what I find more troubling about the pharmacists involved, and your staunch support here, is that no one made this much noise about daily hormonal contraceptives being abortifacients. No one made noise when millions of prescriptions were handed out, over the last few decades, presumably by even those pharmacists who now have such pangs of conscience. Regular daily contraceptive pills operate on the same mechanism, they use the same types of hormones. They can be used off-label in such a way as to have the same effect as EC. Why was no one running to create conscience clauses back in the 1970s? Or even ten years ago?
So my questions are these. Why do you think that these pharmacists, and other conservative groups can define the beginning of a pregnancy when they so choose? They seem to trust doctors to define all sorts of other things for them. Why not this? Was this medical definition arrived at any differently than the scores of others that conservatives accept without skepticism? And why is EC any more of an abortion pill than regular hormonal birth control?
(My apologies for not addressing the meat of this post. I realize that I grabbed on to a somewhat off-hand comment here. But I have yet to receive a satisfying explanation for a situation which to me seems like a cut and dry medical issue.)
Comment by Becky | January 7, 2007
Let’s skip past the fact the definition was pretty well set for centuries before Roe v Wade came along. It was the abortion movement that redefined life to begin at some convenient time and pregnancy was redefined when EC came along. But that’s not the point.
As far as pharmacist conscience goes, they are defining it for themselves and their conscience. You may disagree and that’s fine, it’s a free society. But forcing pharmacists to preform optional procedures against their conscience when 99.9% of other pharmacists would be happy to do it shows which direction this definition is being forced.
As far as hormonal contrapceptives being abortifacients, I can’t speak for the pro-life movement, but I know the Catholic Church has been quite clear and vocal as to both their moral/theological position and their medical objections to hormonal contraception. It’s a position I share as well.
Why is this happened now with EC? You’d have to ask the 4 pharmacists of the about 60,000 that got fired.
Comment by John Bambenek | January 7, 2007
I’m curious as to why you say the definition was well set, when medical science has been continually providing us with a greater and more detailed understanding of the reproductive process. Surely the process was not so well understood hundreds of years ago?
And I must disagree on the point that there was a previously established consensus on the beginning of pregnancy or, the more important point for many in the abortion debate, ensoulment. I wanted to quote a longish piece from the book Billions & Billions by Carl Sagan. In a chapter concerning the abortion debate, he goes into a bit of history about ensoulment and abortion law:
“Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of ‘quickening’ (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.
Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decress that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.
Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church’s first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already ‘formed’–roughly, the end of the first trimester.
But when sperm cell were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated–in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.
From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman’s until ‘quickening.’ … In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. … But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman’s life.”
Sagan cites the beginning of licensing and formal education for doctors as an important factor in these new laws:
“With the rise of the new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.”
So I hope it’s clear that new advances in science have often caused both doctors and religious thinkers to alter their views on when, if ever, abortion is acceptable, and when precisely a pregnancy begins. As far as I know, the definition currently accepted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is that pregnancy begins at implantation. One reason that I know of for this is that a woman’s body does not begin to alter any hormonal processes until implantation. If a fertilized egg does not implant, as is a relatively common occurrence, then the woman goes through the same OM cycle she would during any other month.
I see that pharmacists are making their own definitions, but I am not sure they are qualified to disagree on this point in their capacity as providers of care. While a person’s ethical beliefs should be respected, they cannot trump all other considerations. What if a racist pharmacist thought it was a moral requirement not to serve black people? Or a scientologist pharmacist refused to dispense drugs for depression? The moral stances in these cases cannot trump the individual rights of people to obtain legally prescribed drugs, particularly when the moral stances can be a source of reasonable disagreement. There is certainly no consensus in this country that EC is an abortion drug, or that its use is morally wrong. So it is hard to say that the moral concerns of an individual pharmacist should trump the rights of women to access legal medical care.
And the upshot of allowing pharmacists to opt out is that, in fact, women have much greater difficulty obtaining legal medical care. They face judgment, shaming, discrimination and other kinds of ill-treatment in getting a legal drug that has legally been prescribed for them. Does this seem like a situation that should be not only tolerated, but encouraged? Based on beliefs which are not held by a majority of Americans, and are the source of disagreement between reasonable people?
Yes, the Catholic Church is opposed to contraception. I thought, however, that it was because it prevented the possibility of pregnancy, since married Catholics are supposed to always be open to the possibility of children in marriage, when and how often God wills it. This is separate from the question of abortion, as far as I understand. And my main concern is to clarify that no form of hormonal contraception, whether in EC level dosages or not, can cause an abortion.
Comment by Becky | January 8, 2007
I found this in my documents and see that they address your points adequately.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion directly. Why the silence of the Bible on abortion? The answer is simple. Abortion was so unthinkable to an Israelite woman that there was no need to even mention it in the criminal code. Why was abortion an unthinkable act? First, children were viewed as a gift or heritage from the Lord. Second, the Scriptures state–and the Jews concurred–that God opens and closes the womb and is sovereign over conception. Third, childlessness was seen as a curse.
One of the key verses to understand in developing a biblical view of the sanctity of human life is Psalm 139. This psalm is the inspired record of David’s praise for God’s sovereignty in his life. He begins by acknowledging that God is omniscient and knows what David is doing at any given point in time. He goes on to acknowledge that God is aware of David’s thoughts before he expresses them. David adds that wherever he might go, he cannot escape from God, whether he travels to heaven or ventures into Sheol. God is in the remotest part of the sea and even in the darkness. Finally David contemplates the origin of his life and confesses that God was there forming him in the womb.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (vv. 13-16).
Here David speaks of God’s relationship with him while he was growing and developing before birth. Notice that the Bible doesn’t speak of fetal life as mere biochemistry. The description here is not of a piece of protoplasm that becomes David: this is David already being cared for by God while in the womb.
In verse 13, we see that God is the Master Craftsman fashioning David into a living person. In verses 14 and 15, David reflects on the fact that he is a product of God’s creative work within his mother’s womb, and he praises God for how wonderfully God has woven him together.
David draws a parallel between his development in the womb and Adam’s creation from the earth. Using figurative language in verse 15, he refers to his life before birth when “I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.” This poetic allusion harkens back to Genesis 2:7 which says that Adam was made from the dust of the earth.
David also notes that “Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance.” This shows that God knew David even before he was known to others. The term translated unformed substance is a noun derivative of a verb meaning “to roll up.” When David was just forming as a fetus, God’s care and compassion already extended to him. The reference to “God’s eyes” is an Old Testament term used to connote divine oversight of God in the life of an individual or group of people.
Another significant passage is Psalm 51. It was written by David after his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and records his repentance. David confesses that his sinful act demonstrated the original sin that was within him, “Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 5l:5). David concludes that from his time of conception, he had a sin nature. This would imply that he carried the image of God from the moment of conception, including the marred image scarred from sin.
Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27; 5:1; 9:6). Bearing the image of God is the essence of humanness. And though God’s image in man was marred at the Fall, it was not erased (cf. 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9). Thus, the unborn baby is made in the image of God and therefore fully human in God’s sight.
This verse also provides support for what is called the traducian view of the origin of the soul. According to this perspective, human beings were potentially in Adam (Rom. 5:12, Heb. 7:9-10) and thus participated in his original sin. The “soulish” part of humans is transferred through conception. Therefore, an unborn baby is morally accountable and thus fully human.
Another argument against abortion can be found in the Old Testament legal code, specifically Exodus 21:22-25.
If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
The verses appear to teach that if a woman gives birth prematurely, but the baby is not injured, then only a fine is appropriate. However, if the child dies then the law of retaliation (lex talionis) should be applied. In other words, killing an unborn baby would carry the same penalty as killing a born baby. A baby inside the womb has the same legal status as a baby outside the womb.
[Kerby Anderson
Kerby Anderson is the president of Probe Ministries International. He received his B.S. from Oregon State University, M.F.S. from Yale University, and M.A. from Georgetown University. He is the author of several books, including Genetic Engineering, Origin Science, Living Ethically in the 90s, Signs of Warning, Signs of Hope, and Moral Dilemmas. He also served as general editor for Marriage, Family and Sexuality.]
Comment by loboinok | January 10, 2007
I must first object to the notion that obvious crimes were never mentioned in the Bible. One would think that murder would be considered a no-brainer, but that one is pretty prominently placed, no?
And yes, there are plenty of passages throughout the Bible which can be interpreted, in concert, to form the sort of pro-life beliefs that people hold today. I am not sure, however, how easy it is to make the case that your specific interpretation is the right one. It’s a long book, it’s got a lot in it. Might a dedicated person be able to make all sorts of arguments by the same stringing together of disparate passages?
(That is merely a question. I am not a Biblical scholar and don’t really have the ability to dissect your arguments properly.)
I do think that Sagan’s point is interesting, however. The laws in the old testament were very detailed, and seemingly quite inclusive. Why even leave the obvious things out?
The Exodus 21:22-25 quote is not so cut and dry as you make out. The wording differs between different translations of the Bible, and it’s not clear (to me, at least) whether the passage means to say that the result was a miscarriage or an early (but successful) birth.
I’ve tried to make a longish list for comparison’s sake…
Here are some older versions from a University of Michigan Website:
so that she loses her child (Good News)
so that she has a miscarriage (New English)
and she miscarry indeed (Challoner)
so that her fruit depart from her (King James)
so that her fruit shall depart from her (Webster)
so that her childe depart from her (Geneva)
so that her fruite depart from her (Bishops’)
so that her frute departe from her (T. Matthew)
so that hyr frute departe from her (Great)
so that þe frute departe from her (Coverdale)
so that hir frute departe from her (Tyndale)
and she in deede aborte (Rheims Douai)
and sotheli makith the child deed borun (Wycliffe (late))
and make forsothe the child deed born (Wycliffe (early))
(I am interpreting “deed born” to mean stillbirth in the two Wycliffe versions, as on the next verse death is spelled “deeth”)
And here are some primarily newer versions from Biblegateway.com:
she gives birth prematurely (footnoted as “or she has a miscarriage”, NIV)
she gives birth prematurely (New American Standard Bible)
she gives birth prematurely (footnoted as “Or so she has a miscarriage; Hebrew reads so her children come out.”, New Living Translation)
so that she gives birth prematurely (New King James Version)
so that she be delivered (Darby Translation)
so that her children are born [prematurely] (footnoted “Either a live birth or a miscarriage”, Holman Christian Standard Bible)
And suppose she has her baby early (New International Reader’s Version)
so that she miscarries (The Message)
so that she has a miscarriage (Amplified Bible)
suffers a miscarriage (footnoted as “Or gives birth before her time”, Contemporary English Version)
so that she loses her baby (New Life Version)
so that her children come out (English Standard Version)
and her children have come out (Young’s Literal Translation)
so that her fruit depart (American Standard Version)
I’ve split them into groups based on their wording. None of the older versions is entirely clear, though the use of the words miscarriage, abort, or “dead born” implies the loss of the baby. “So that the fruit depart” is more ambiguous, although depart could surely be interpreted in either a literal way (the baby left the body but survived) or a figurative way (the baby died, dead people are often referred to as “departed”).
The newer versions obviously often interpret the older wording literally, though several leave the alternate interpretation in a footnote. And still other versions retain the use of the word miscarriage or the more ambiguous “the fruit depart”.
Unless you have some rigorous standard for determining which wording is correct or more historically accurate then, it is not clear to me that your interpretation of the passage is definitive. (I understand that Sagan was just as definite about his interpretation, and I cannot entirely defend his position either. The main point of my quoting that passage from him was not to say definitively that the pro-life view is indefensible in terms of the Bible but to establish that views on abortion have not been set in stone since the dawn of time, or even since the beginnings of Christianity.)
And again, if anyone would like to address my original question about EC, I would be most appreciative.
Comment by Becky | January 16, 2007