By ANDY ABSHER

I do apologize to Jennifer Gates if she misunderstood my previous letter. I find Jennifer’s complaint that my letter was an example of religious hatred somewhat disingenuous. I really can’t imagine anyone being so obtuse that they would mistake what are my obvious objections to her “mythical” version of history as a statement of religious belief.

Historians will tell you that if you want to understand the meaning of particular words or quotations that you must view them in their historical context. In particular, the Constitution doesn’t speak of separation of church and state but of religious establishments. Prior to the ratification of the Constitution, many states still had some type of religious establishment. A religious establishment was public support of religion, in other words financial support by taxation. The ratification of the Constitution along with the Bill of Rights limited the Federal Government not the state governments. State governments were free to continue with their establishments or to discontinue them. It wasn’t a first amendment issue. Some states continued to have religious establishments for another 30 years after the ratification of the Constitution and Protestant Christianity continued as the defacto religion in most states until the 1960’s. 

Lets add a little more context. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to specify certain restrictions on the federal government. Madison didn’t believe the bill was necessary, not because he believed that the federal government’s authority should be unlimited but he believed it already was limited by the Constitution without the Bill of Rights. The point here is that all of the framers of the Constitution believed in a limited federal government. So, if you want to understand what they intended in the First Amendment you can’t ignore the context of a limited government. A limited government meant many fewer potential conflicts with religion. We no longer have a limited federal government, ergo, the conflicts and confusion between religion and government are greatly increased.

Now if Jennifer would actually have taken my advice to not pick isolated quotations she would never have picked Justice Black’s statement in Everson to make her point. In the previous paragraph he describes how it is via the 14th amendment that the First Amendment is being applied to the states. Again, the First Amendment applied to the federal government only, not the states. It is the 14th Amendment, and what I believe is its misapplication in this area, that has caused the problems we see today, not the First Amendment. Quite simply, anyone who argues from the First Amendment without also engaging the 14th Amendment to justify separation of church and state is exhibiting gross ignorance.

Now let’s add a little more context. Thomas Jefferson has become the poster boy for separation of church and state. I wonder how he would feel about that? He hated John Marshal the Chief Supreme Court justice during his presidency and sought to limit the Supreme Court’s authority. He disagreed with the Marbury vs. Madison decision concerning judicial review and believed that states could decide what was constitutional, and he advocated states rights to the point where he stated that they had the right to secede. Now imagine Justice Black standing over his hero’s grave after Everson: “Well, Tom, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is we had to overlook about 90 percent of what you advocated throughout your life to bolster the wall of separation. The good new is that in the future the only Nativity scenes on any public lot will be ones where the part of Joseph and the wise men are played by Santa Claus and his elves.” 

It is probably evident at this point that I am not going to use any quotations to support my argument. Part of the reason for this is I wasn’t sure how many quotes I needed to win. Do three Thomas Jefferson quotes beat two Justice Black quotes? Are all Thomas Jefferson quotes equal? How much are James Madison quotes worth? Mostly I didn’t use them because what I mentioned here should have been learned in high school history and civics classes. Although I will admit, I slept though most of my history classes, so maybe I’m wrong. 

In summary, the problem with Jennifer’s view is twofold: it doesn’t accurately reflect how things have always been in the United States, and it marginalizes religion. Our current problems have been caused by enlarging the scope of the government while at the same time holding to the strictest possible view of the establishment clause. I don’t think it’s realistic to think that we will or should roll back the clock, but it should be obvious that we aren’t where the framers intended.

Andy Absher is an Anderson resident.