Separation of Church and State

by

Edwin Kagin

Lecture given at Marshall University
October 22, 1996

I am a secular humanist. I got that way primarily by reading this book, the Holy Bible. This is the one put out by the Gideons. It's the 1611 edition known as the King James Version. Fundamentalists believe that this is the only authorized gospel, the only Word of God. It was written in 1611 under the auspices of King James the First of England, a homosexual, and is used as the authority for the fundamentalist church. My father was a Presbyterian minister and I was raised deeply into this book. I understand it: if you want to talk the Bible, we can talk the Bible. If you want to debate the Bible, we can debate the Bible.

I have also studied the Constitution of the United States of America, and the principles upon which the republic was founded. I understand the laws upon which this country was founded. One of the reasons that secular humanist alliances have sprung up on various college campuses recently is that there is a new and very dramatic movement in this country toward getting away from some very important things that America was founded on. There are people today who are trying to impose upon America, upon a free democracy, their ideas that America is a Christian nation. Not only that it is a Christian nation, but that it is their kind of Christian nation. And to that end, we are to have prayers in public schools, mandated by law. We are to teach creationism, not evolution. We are to go backwards to the days of the theocracy.

Some years before the authoring of the American Constitution, there were witch trials in Salem Massachusetts. By the way, there were no witches burned in America -- that's a myth. Witches were hanged -- they hanged quite a few too, several dozen. And primary among the evidence was what was known as spectral evidence. That's where someone would come and say an angel or a demon appeared to me and told me Mary So-and-So is having an affair with the Devil. And based upon this evidence, they were hanged. So ultimately, the governor of Massachusetts prohibited that kind of evidence in a trial.

Prior to the development of our Constitution, many states, including Virginia and Connecticut and other states, had language in their constitutions saying that the governments of those states were based upon Christian principles. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, if you didn't go to the right church, and the right church was a Congregationalist church, they'd find you and come and talk to you. You could be accused and convicted of a crime called Sabbath-breaking. If you did it again, you could go to jail. You'd be put in the public stocks. There were many people who didn't want to attend a Congregationalist church -- there were some Catholics, there were some Baptists, there were some Anabaptists. There were all sorts of different religions which had different views.

We get the impression in history, especially around Thanksgiving time, that the Puritans were a bunch of righteous people who came to America seeking religious freedom. In point of fact, the Puritans came from England after their regime was overthrown in what was known as the Restoration. They chopped off the head of their king, Charles the First. Then a very strict religious theocracy under Oliver Cromwell was set up in England. They closed the theaters. The Puritans were in complete control. It was said that a Puritan was someone who suspected somewhere, somehow, there might be someone who was still happy. So a very rigid system of belief was imposed upon the people. After a while, the English got tired of it, and they brought back Charles the First's son Charles the Second from France. He opened the theaters, and things got happy again. The Puritans, not content with this, leave and sail on the Mayflower to the New World. While off the shores of America, they form what is know as the Mayflower Compact. You will hear fundamentalists say this was how our country was set up -- not so. This was the articles of faith of this one religious group. They didn't come here to escape religious persecution, they came here because they couldn't persecute everybody else anymore. And they have been trying to do it ever since. We are the heirs of the Puritans in the New World.

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine accepted the prevailing belief of that time: a philosophical doctrine know as Deism. This was not Christian: it said that there was a God, but that this God had made the world and then gone on to other things -- sort of forgot about it. He had put things into motion and then went on to other places in the universe. Thomas Jefferson was very well aware that many of the state constitutions said that they were set up on the basis of "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and he didn't want anything to do with it. So after much debate, the Constitution of the United States was set up as a totally godless document. The word God is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States. You can win bets on this point. These people who say that America is a religious nation are simply wrong. Sometimes they will quote to you in support of their argument the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In the first place, the Declaration of Independence forms no part of the law of the United States. It was a document that was used to severe ties with England, and when Thomas Jefferson is speaking of the "Creator" and of "Nature" and "Nature's God," he is not talking in the same sense as Jerry Falwell or the religious right when they talk about America being a Christian nation.

In the Constitution of the United States, the founders wanted to be very clear that no particular religion was going to be given precedence over any other. If we're going to have prayer in the public school, who's prayer is it going to be? Catholic prayer, Jewish prayer, Branch Davidian, perhaps Mormon, Christian Science, Native American? Who's prayer will we have? I got written up by a Seventh Day Adventist a while back. I had sued all of the judges in Northern Kentucky. They had entered an ordinance saying that anyone in a divorce who had children had to attend Catholic social services. Liberty Magazine of the Seventh Day Adventists sent a fellow who had a doctorate in theology degree to interview me. He was Christian, but I knew where he was coming from, and he knew where I was coming from. We got along just fine. I said to him, "I know why you want to do this. You know that if an official religion is ever set up in the United States, it ain't gonna be Seventh Day Adventism." And he said that he did know that.

So what religion will be our official religions? Here's what the Constitution says: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." No religious test at all: not whether you believe in God, much less whether you believe in a specific religion -- no religious test at all. For you scholars, that is Article 6, Section 3. Once the Constitution was written, various states refused to ratify it until a certain Bill of Rights was added. Ten Amendments to the Constitution -- not the Ten Commandments -- ten Amendments. The very first amendment in the Bill of Rights -- the same Bill of Rights that the thirteen colonies insisted be there before they would sign -- reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. " Those are the first words of the Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Well, the fundamentalists say, "You're prohibiting the free exercise of religion by not letting us teach creationism and having prayers in the public schools." Ridiculous. You can practice all the religion you want in your homes, in your churches, in your synagogues, any place you want.

In fact, if you want to really get biblical on them, Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount specifically forbad public prayer. Matthew chapter 6, verse 6: "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." He then goes on in the Sermon on the Mount to tell what will happen to those who disobey: "And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." [Matthew 7:26-27] So maybe the problems of America are not caused by lack of public prayer, but because of it.

Consider the Netherlands, which is perhaps the most secular nation on earth. In the Netherlands, birth control is freely given, homosexuality is tolerated, and many drugs are legal. You can get a marijuana cigarette after dinner. Pornography is legal. Euthanasia for people who are in intractable pain is permitted. And guess what? They have less of a crime rate, they have less teenage pregnancy, they have less drug abuse, and less abortion than the most religious nation on earth, the United States of America. There may be a lesson to be learned here. America is by far the most religious nation on the face of the earth. More people are professing Christians here than any place else in the world. And yet a country like the Netherlands, where this is not true, does not have the kind of problems we have, because it is a rational society, where morality is based on the consequences of behavior. Moral choices have consequences. If you drive drunk, you are liable to get killed. You behave morally because of reason , not because some book told you to.

To the Eastern mind, Christianity is an incredible religion, because it calls on something outside of ourselves to tell us what to do. Christianity claims that without God we are nothing, that we must look to some authority to tell us what to do, rather than be able to figure it out by moral choice. Hitler remained a loyal Catholic for his entire life. He was never excommunicated. Hitler made abortion illegal -- it was a crime in Germany. Think about it. How much true good are the Mother Teresas of the world doing by going and helping these starving children that their philosophy helped to produce? Is this moral, or would it be more moral to have birth control universally available?

In the course of what I call the American Religious Civil War, the ARCW, the fundamentalists have declared war on reason and are trying to convince people in universities, on the radio, through tapes, TV, and other media, that America is a Christian nation set up on Christian principles. I wish to show you how to refute this overwhelmingly. You may have heard of Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. Oddly enough, the Baptists of a few hundred years ago were very much in favor of separation of church and state, because they were being persecuted by the Anabaptists. There were bloody wars fought over how you got baptized -- whether you got sprinkled on your head as a child, or whether you got dunked as an adult in a pool of water. And people died over this nonsense. The Danbury Baptists wrote to Thomas Jefferson to see what the First Amendment really meant. Thomas Jefferson spent a lot of time on his response, and even cleared it with the Secretary of State. Here is what he said: " 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 prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." Here is church, here is state, and there is a Constitutional wall between them and that is the principle of our democracy.

To give you an example of how some people can attack truth, we have in the fundamentalist camp a fellow by the name of David Barton. In an article from the Freedom Writer, "The Religous Right's Master of Myth and Misinformation," we learn that Barton is consciously and deliberately changing history in basic American documents. He has added a line to Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists that I just read to you. According to Barton, Jefferson went on to add that the wall was meant to be one-directional, protecting the church from the state, but not the other way around. And furthermore, it was intended to keep Christian principles in government. That's what David Barton is saying, and it is a damned lie! It is a knowing lie. He knows it's not true, because he can look at the text and see what it says. It is not an accident, it is a "damn 'cussed lie." Telling lies for God! "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer." [Psalms 19:14] He is damned by his own rules!

Let me give you just a few other examples of the principle of separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson also said, "I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another." The only way any religion can be free is if they are all free, and if there is no state religion. Let's suppose you have some little religious movement that nobody likes Do you want to go to jail for it? Or do you want to have the right to free exercise? You can go build a church any place you want to. Nobody's going to stop you. But you can't come to Marshall University, and have a Christian Center on campus, because that's illegal. That's preferring one religion over another. I have been to see your Christian chapel, and I understand it's paid for by private funds and is on private property. But they've got a sign that looks deceptively like a Marshall University sign, it doesn't have the "M.U." on it, but it looks just like it apart from that. Then further I note on the campus map that is paid for by taxpayer's dollars that the Christian Center is shown there. And I have also seen the Student Handbook where the Christian Center is listed as one of the services provided by Marshall University. That's the establishment of religion. That's preferring religion over nonreligion.

The fundamentalists want to give the impression that those who disagree with them are bad people, that they are somehow immoral, that they are responsible for all the sins of the world. I believe in killing the hummingbird with a cannon on this one: we are talking about the survival of our freedoms, we are talking about democracy. Thomas Jefferson said this: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Who's foot should we measure all shoes by? What religion shall be our official religion? Who here can define Christianity? If it was so clear and easy to define, then why are there so many sects, why so many different creeds? Even within the denominations, Baptists, Presbyterians splintering off. Do we believe that the Eucharist actually turns into the body and blood of Christ, as the Catholics say, or is it merely symbolic as the Protestants claim? How do we know? And if there is a God, why is it not perfectly obvious to everyone? Why are there some people who are rational, who otherwise seem to lead fairly decent and moral lives who say, "No, I don't see any evidence for it." And further, would a just God condemn creatures he made with the faculties of reason who use this power of reason to say "I don't see the evidence"? Why doesn't the Blessed Virgin Mary appear simultaneously on all TV and radio stations in the languages of all the people announcing the truths of God? Why not a message on the moon, clearly visible to all? Something that nobody could doubt. Why have visions only appeared to schizophrenic children? Why so much misinterpretation about something so important as this?

Again, Thomas Jefferson says, "I will never by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." James Madison spoke similarly, in a 1774 letter to William Bradford: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect." Our ancestors spoke out a lot more than we are. Why are we so afraid of these abysmal little tyrannical minds who are trying to commit treason against the government of the United States?! Why are we letting them get away with it? "The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as days may dictate. This right is in its nature an inalienable right."

On June 10, 1797, the President of the United States John Adams signed a treaty with the nation of Tripoli, a Muslim country. In the order of hierarchy of laws, the Constitution of the United States is at the top, underneath that are treaties between sovereign governments, then the various federal laws and the laws of the states. Under the Constitution, treaties (except maybe some with the Indians) have the highest force of law in our country. The treaty with Tripoli, signed by the President, and unanimously ratified by the United States Senate, reads, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." I didn't make this up. This was widely circulated in the newspapers of the time, it was widely debated. The Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights were condemned by fundamentalists ministers all over the country as being godless documents. The people knew what these documents meant. Once again, we are witnessing this treasonous, un-American attitude arising, trying to claim that what the founding fathers said, what the Constitution said, and what the treaties between sovereign countries said, don't mean that. We're having people like this Barton fellow, who is trying to add lines to Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists to try to make it say what he wants it to say, and not what it says. Love it or leave. If you don't like the American system, go set up your theocracy on an island, get out of town. But don't mess with American freedom.

There is a wonderful little pamphlet, called a "nontract," put out by the Freedom From Religion Foundation entitled "Is America a Christian Nation?" Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation was a fundamentalist minister. He converted a lot of people. And finally he started thinking, and he became an atheist. He wrote a book called Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist . He tells why he came to this conclusion, and why he left the fold. He found that there was no proof for the claims of Christianity, and that the people who were claiming to be religious were doing bad things.

Case in point: in Northern Kentucky right now, there is a state park called Big Bone Lick State Park. It is a park devoted to archaeological finds. An Australian fundamentalist group called "Answers in Genesis" has come to Northern Kentucky and is trying to establish a creationist theme park near Big Bone Lick to teach children and others that evolution is wrong and that creation science is right. If you ever wanted an example of an oxymoron, "Creation Science" is it. What they are trying to say is that evolution is a religious belief system of the secular humanists, and that creationism is a true science. They also believe that this humanistic belief in evolution is responsible for all the bad things that are happening in the world. They see it as a war. Here's one of their cartoons: We have two fortresses. Over here we have evolution at the base of this one, and there are flags that say "Humanism, divorce, racism, euthanasia, homosexuality." All these things are caused by belief in evolution. And over here we have creation that has a flag of Christianity, blowing holes into the towers of evolution. I didn't invent the idea of the American Religious Civil War. They're the ones who declared the war on reason.

Let me give you some examples of how the religious right is trying to take over. A handout from the "Genesis Theme Park" in Northern Kentucky says, " Virtually science museums, zoos, and other similar attractions indoctrinate guests with evolutionary and antibiblical propaganda." Notice how they juxtapose neatly those concepts. That evolution is necessarily antibiblical -- you either believe one or the other. A classic logical fallacy is called the "either/or" fallacy. "It must be the Bible, or it must be evolution." The handout continues: "A major family park and learning center proclaiming the glories of God's creation and the authority of His Word is desperately needed to counter the anti-God philosophy so prevalent in today's world." They have declared war against reason.

Here is a wonderful little comic book put out by Mother Jones. It's called "Holy War: The religious right's secret campaign to take over my daughter's public school." All over the country, stealth candidates are arising. That sounds paranoid, but these are real enemies. They are getting into the school boards, and they want to teach creationism. Right now in one of our counties in Kentucky, a school superintendent has glued pages of the science textbooks together which talk about the Big Bang theory, because that's wrong and he doesn't want anybody to learn it. They are trying to go back to the time before Copernicus. If we are really going to follow the truths of Genesis and the Bible, we must believe the earth is flat. You ought to read the Bible and see if you really can accept it as true. If you read it literally, the earth is flat. It speaks of the four corners of the earth, the pillars of the earth. Jesus was taken by Satan to a high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the earth. You can't do that on a round earth. Clearly the people who wrote the Bible, like other people of the time, thought the earth was flat. There is even a religious organization called the "Flat Earth Society" that advocates that belief. They are dedicated to the biblical proposition that the earth is in fact flat.

Have you ever heard of "family friendly libraries"? That's another thing the fundamentalist are trying to do. They think that only they can define a family. They've got a program called "Focus on the Family." There's a neat bumper sticker that says "Focus on your own damn family. Leave my family alone." The "family friendly" libraries are trying to censor books. Here's a wonderful little volume called the "X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible." It has enough gleaned from the Holy Word to make it banned in any fundamentalist library. That's why you ought to read the Bible. There is a wonderful story about Lot, -- the one who was saved from Sodom. His two daughters get him drunk and seduce him in order to get pregnant. These terrible stories just go on and on.

This is the field manual of the Free Militia. This book will scare the wits out of you. You know about the militia movements? These are people who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation, and that it is their duty by force of arms if need be to preserve that. Anybody who disagrees with them is an enemy of God. Onward Christian soldiers. This is their field manual, telling what kind of guns to get, how to organize teams of 8 people to attack the homes of nonbelievers. It is extremely scary.

As we get closer and closer to the year 2000, more and more of this nonsense is going to come up. There is right now a millennialist fever in the United States. There are many people who believe that Jesus will be returning at the millennium. I will note that many people thought that Jesus would return in the year 1000 as well. He didn't. In the first place, and this may come as a shock to you, the year 2000 is not the first year of the millennium. The year 2000 is the last year of this millennium. The first year of the next millennium is 2001, and that's why Arthur C. Clarke name his book "2001." Arthur C. Clarke, by the way, is an atheist. Our calendar dating the birth of Jesus is wrong. This is 1996 AD, which means "Anno Domini," or, "in the year of our Lord." It is supposed to be 1996 years after the birth of Jesus. But it really isn't, because if we take the Bible literally, we know that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. We know from very accurate and numerous historic sources that Herod the Great died in the year 4 BC. So if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, he would have been born at least as early as 4 BC. So if that's the case, then the millennium has come and gone, and nothing happened. So don't worry about the millennium.

We have discussed prayer in the public schools, the creationist movement, and the attack on the libraries. My voice is getting a little stale, and I'm ready to answer some questions...

Last updated: 25 January 2005