THE IMPORTANCE OF SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
by Clyde Rich

Today, religious right groups insist that the U. S. was designed to be officially Christian and that our laws should endorse (their version of) the doctrines of Christianity. In fact, the U. S. Constitution is a wholly secular document. It mentions religion only twice—in the First Amendment, which bars laws “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibits the free exercise thereof,” and in Article VI, which prohibits “religious tests” for public office.

These statements simply mean that the government cannot promote religion or interfere with its practice. They are clear evidence that the country was not founded as a Christian state as claimed by religious right groups. Thomas Jefferson said that the First Amendment built a “wall of separation between church and state.” Senator Barry Goldwater, a conservative Republican candidate for president, said, “By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has averted the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars.” Our pluralistic system guarantees every person the right to choose his or her own spiritual path or to reject religion entirely.

A national drive is under way to merge church and state through an unprecedented scheme in which taxpayers finance religious ministries to provide social services such as after-school programs, sexual abstinence education, job training, drug treatment, and prison rehabilitation. This drive is based on the controversial concept of “charitable choice,” which allows the government to fund churches and other religious ministries without safeguards that prevent publicly funded religious coercion, job discrimination, and other state-church abuses.

Charitable choice originated with then Senator John Ashcroft during the drafting of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Existing law was altered to permit taxpayer-financed houses of worship in a few welfare programs. Charitable choice removed safeguards which had required religious organizations to set up separate independent groups, banned pressure on recipients to participate in religious exercises, and prohibited discrimination in hiring on religious grounds. Bush, Frist, DeLay and other advocates of government funding of faith-based institutions would use the massive power of the federal government to support religious conversions. This effort strikes at the heart of the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. It also threatens interfaith peace by pitting faith groups against each other in competition for public funds. For the first time in American history, religious groups will be asked, indeed encouraged, to battle it out for a slice of the government pie.

The Bush administration’s effort to apply charitable choice to nearly every aspect of government funding, his “faith-based initiative,” has sparked intense criticism from religious, civil liberties, civil rights, educational, and social service groups. Even the social justice arm of Bush’s own religious denomination, the United Methodist Church, opposes faith-based funding. Ultimately, public funding of faith-based institutions is one of those rare proposals that harm virtually everyone affected by them. It promotes publicly funded employment discrimination, threatens the religious liberties of beneficiaries, jeopardizes the freedom of faith communities, and undermines the rights of all taxpayers. America can fulfill its time-honored commitment to help people in need without tearing down the vital separation between church and state.