What Jefferson and Madison said

Sam Killay
Claremont
To the editor,

I wish I had the patience to argue my case against the religious displays on Broad Street Park with complete dispassion. Alas, my interest here isn’t entirely academic. I grow weary of my opponents endlessly distorting the meaning of the Establishment Clause. Although I’ve made my case against a lax interpretation of that element of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, my opponents still want to think otherwise — probably because it suits with their religious sensibilities to do so.

Let’s be done with that. Here, in their own words, are opinions on matters of separation of church & state by the two men most responsible for the founding documents of our nation, including the Bill of Rights and the Establishment Clause. Here is President Thomas Jefferson, writing to a congregation of (minority sect) Baptists in Connecticut after they gave him a nice gift in appreciation of his opinions on religious liberty:

‘Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, 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 prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.’

A wall of separation. We’ve had much discussion about walls in the last few years. Walls denote an intention to divide things from each other utterly. Doesn’t sound to me like TJ meant for religion to have any place in our government (or vice versa). And here’s President James Madison on the institution of chaplains at the very first Congress:

“The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics & Quakers …. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.”

Again, the words are not ambiguous. Madison, like Jefferson, clearly believed that even this small encroachment by religion into government was in starkest violation of the intent of the Establishment Clause.

So let’s not mince words: religious displays on civic property are easily unconstitutional. As to the second half of Madison’s quotation, the Christians of Claremont seem determined, as the majority sect, to test their ability to maintain the displays on the strength of “the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers.” But it isn’t a matter of majorities here: your majorities can’t overrule the Constitutional rights of other people. Numbers be damned: those displays are illegal and need to be removed.

 

Sam Killay

Claremont