{"id":6213,"date":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2013\/04\/30\/first-freedom-the-fight-for-religious-liberty-the-film\/"},"modified":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T00:00:00","slug":"first-freedom-the-fight-for-religious-liberty-the-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2013\/04\/30\/first-freedom-the-fight-for-religious-liberty-the-film\/","title":{"rendered":"First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty – The Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhat is the truth when it comes to understanding the constitutional principles of the separation of church and state, and the free exercise of religion? In
\n\ttoday\u2019s passionate melee over the Health and Human Services\u2019 \u201ccontraception mandate,\u201d and on other issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, the
\n\tplacement of Ten Commandment monuments in public buildings, or the direct funding of private and religious schools by federal and state governmental
\n\tentities, factions on both the religious and political Left and Right are co-opting and invoking the nation\u2019s constitutional Founders. Many summon them
\n\tignorantly and incredulously.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn an effort to bring clarity to the public view, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) entered the national discussion in December last year by airing\tFirst Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty<\/em>. The production represents a masterpiece of the blended, nuanced views of center-, center-Left-,
\n\tand center-Right-leaning scholars in a unified presentation on how our country\u2019s constitutional Founders separated the supervisory and regulatory power of
\n\tthe state from the church, and the manipulating and coercive power of the church from the state. The Founders recognized that a truly successful democratic
\n\trepublic could never survive without making both the church and the state independent and free. This distinction is worth noting because PBS, and the cast
\n\tof scholars it chose, have made very clear the stark differences between America\u2019s puritan and constitutional founding periods. The Great Awakening is
\n\tpresented as neccessary to make sense of the theological, cultural, and political seeds of the American Revolution and the gradual transition between these
\n\ttwo main periods of American history.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA City Upon a Hill\u201d<\/h2>\n

\n\tAmerica\u2019s nascent journey toward religious freedom sprang from both religion and politics. It began with the English Pilgrim Separatists who settled
\n\tPlymouth Colony upon their arrival on the Mayflower<\/em> in 1620. They were Puritans who broke away from the monarchical Church of England because they
\n\tfelt they had not completed the work of the Protestant Reformation. This, they believed, was because of the church-state unity that corrupted both the
\n\tstate and the church\u2019s \u201cseparate but holy\u201d duties. The Congregationalist Puritans were given a royal charter to settle what would become the Massachusetts
\n\tBay Colony centered in Plymouth, and later in Boston. These Puritans accepted some of the customs and rights of the Church of England and defined
\n\tchurch-state collaborations for their own holy and utopian societal purposes.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the seeds of their own unraveling came through their lack of tolerance for dissension, usually resulting when anyone expressed a differing point of
\n\tview. This led to the martyrdom of evangelical pioneer Mary Dyer, the banishment of Anne Hutchinson, the Salem witch trials, in which 20 women and girls
\n\twere put to death, and the subsequent persecution and exile of Roger Williams. He was the inspiration for future Baptist pastors such as Isaac Backus and
\n\tJohn Leland, who would go on to nurture Williams\u2019 heretical doctrine of church-state separation in the minds and hearts of America\u2019s Revolutionary
\n\tFounders, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe Great Awakening\u00a0and the Road to Revolution
\n\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tThe PBS special moves gradually from the Puritan colonial years to the First Great Awakening, in which evangelicalism began to sweep all the
\n\tcolonies\u2014north, middle, and south. According to Colonial period scholar Jon Butler from Yale University, this period was particularly significant because
\n\tthe Congregational Puritan Church gradually became the stepchild of the government, and no longer the master. Clergy came under fire for increasingly
\n\tboring sermons as the Dutch and English field preachers, inspired through the charismatic and winsome ministry of the great revivalist George Whitefield,
\n\tspread the emancipating message of universal salvation through Christ. Whitefield\u2019s sermon tracts, as well as his preaching throughout all the colonies,
\n\tgave birth to America\u2019s First Great Awakening.1<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat remained constant in both the Puritan and First Great Awakening periods was the idea that America was the new Israel in a new Promised Land. What
\n\tchanged was the insertion of a revolutionary cause whose message was universal salvation and freedom through Christ alone, and not by way of a king, a
\n\tspecific denominational polity, or government. Religious pluralism, largely a Protestant phenomenon, germinated the spirit of democracy and
\n\tantiestablishmentarianism.2<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Quebec Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1774, inflamed many in the colonies. It replaced the previous oath of allegiance with one that no
\n\tlonger made reference to the Protestant faith. It guaranteed Catholics the freedom to worship and practice their faith. It restored the Catholic Church\u2019s
\n\tright to impose tithes. American Protestants saw this act as a sign that they were becoming increasingly hemmed in and surrounded by Catholics to the north
\n\tin Canada, Catholic Spaniards to the south in Florida, and Catholic Francophiles in Louisiana. It had the effect of augmenting the growing revolutionary
\n\tfervor in America against Britain.\n<\/p>\n

Declaration of Independence Coincides With Virginia\u2019s Declaration of Rights<\/h2>\n

\n\tWhen Parliament replaced the Toleration Act of 1689 with the Coercive, or Intolerable, Acts of 1774, it represented a frontal assault and rejection of John
\n\tLocke\u2019s Two Treatises of Government,3<\/em> which had been published in London in 1689. Locke\u2019s central premise was that individual rights, equal
\n\trights, were inalienable and came from God and not kings. The educated elite in the American colonies took immediate note of this significance. Therefore
\n\tit is not surprising that the very language of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s authorship of the Declaration of Independence had John Locke written all over it in
\n\tphilosophy, message, and tone, serving as a corresponding assault on King George III and the so-called divine right of kings:\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that
\n\tamong these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d4<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this mix of heady revolutionary talk was Virginia\u2019s Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in May of 1776, with a special section emphasizing
\n\treligious freedom authored by James Madison. Unanimously adopted on June 12, 1776, by Virginia\u2019s Convention of Delegates, it too had John Locke\u2019s name
\n\twritten all over it. The Virginia Declaration of Rights influenced the Declaration of Independence (drafted in June and ratified on July 4, 1776), the
\n\tUnited States Bill of Rights, and the French Revolution\u2019s Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789).\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSection XVI of the Virginia Declaration declared: \u201cThat religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed
\n\tby reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates
\n\tof conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.\u201d5<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, on June 12, 1788, James Madison, the unsung hero and little known father of the United States Constitution, made this brilliant observation to the
\n\tdelegates at Virginia\u2019s ratifying convention regarding how freedom of religion was to be achieved and how it was the central basis for the hope of any
\n\tsuccessful experiment with a constituted democratic republic: \u201cIs a bill of rights a security for religion? . . . If there were a majority of one sect, a
\n\tbill of rights would be a poor protection for liberty. Happily for the states, they enjoy the utmost freedom of religion.\u201d \u201cThis freedom,\u201d Madison argued,
\n\t\u201carises from that multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where
\n\tthere is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.\u201d6<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the fall of 1788 Madison, in his extensive correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, said that he was \u201cin favor of a bill of rights\u201d if it was \u201cso framed as
\n\tnot to imply powers not meant to be included in the enumeration.\u201d7<\/sup> In other words, it was assumed that since Congress possessed no power to
\n\tinterfere with basic rights, the Constitution alone would be enough. The problem remained, Jefferson argued, that such basic rights had yet to be spelled
\n\tout in a formal guarantee. But Madison persisted in reasoning that certain essential rights, particularly the rights of conscience, could never be fully
\n\tguaranteed by law.8<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

James Madison\u2014Getting It Right<\/h2>\n

\n\tAt the first session of Congress in 1789, the House of Representatives and the Senate wrote separate draft language for what they thought should be the
\n\twording of the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the House side, James Madison led the way, bringing to the table his vast experience in drafting the religious freedom section in Virginia\u2019s Declaration
\n\tof Rights, Section XVI, and from his long fight with Thomas Jefferson to pass Virginia\u2019s Statute for Religious Freedom. Madison had also defeated Patrick
\n\tHenry\u2019s \u201cBill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion.\u201d Madison\u2019s leadership produced drafts that avoided language that would open
\n\tthe door to nonpreferential or so-called nondiscriminatory types of funding for churches and private religious schools, or for constitutional amendment
\n\tlanguage stating that the nation was a \u201cChristian nation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution continue to produce the same divide between those who seek to keep church and state as separate as possible
\n\tand those who seek to have government both sponsor and fund faith-based charities, institutions, and schools. In the PBS special, Professor Robert George
\n\tof Princeton University subtly but clearly argues that the religion clauses were meant by the constitutional Founders to foster \u201cthe right to bring faith
\n\tinto the public square.\u201d9<\/sup>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow far, how little?\u201d are the obvious questions that remain with us today. Does this mean government sponsorship of prayer in public schools, or
\n\tgovernment funding of religious ones? Professor Robert Alley of the University of Virginia, Jefferson\u2019s creation, makes this extreme statement: \u201cTo
\n\twhatever degree a form of [religious] establishment, no matter how mild, enters the Constitution through the amending process, free exercise of religion is
\n\tdust.\u201d10<\/sup> Really? The truth\u2014as former Associate Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor continually revealed in her balanced opinions and rulings on the
\n\tSupreme Court\u2014continues to lie somewhere in between.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Founders did get it right, as did the rest of the United States of America. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina introduced the \u201cno religious test
\n\tclause\u201d for public office holding and oath taking in Article VI of the Constitution,11<\/sup> which directly influenced the outcome of the presidential
\n\telection of 1800 and the emergence of Thomas Jefferson as president. The constitutional Founders sought an Enlightenment-influenced separation from Puritan
\n\tand medieval standards of church domination of the state. The religion clauses of the First Amendment set in motion an America that became even more
\n\tenthusiastically religious, pluralistic, powerful, and free. They empowered the Second Great Awakening.12<\/sup> As Jon Meacham observed in the PBS
\n\tspecial, America emerged in a way like no other country in history\u2014a country in which its citizens could privately and publicly honor its civil-religious
\n\ttraditions without government endorsement or support, financially or otherwise.13\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to government funding, today\u2019s reality may seem to defy the intent of the Founders, but Jefferson\u2019s and Madison\u2019s proverbial \u201cwall of
\n\tseparation\u201d continues to hold back today\u2019s zealous tide of state-sponsored puritanism, while the free exercise of religion continues to hold back the
\n\tforces of extremism in the form of state-sponsored godlessness.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, America\u2019s constitutional Founders believed in freedom of religion, not freedom from religion or freedom to enforce religion on others based on
\n\ttheir beliefs, or anyone\u2019s beliefs, particularly acts of worship. This meant upholding both the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First
\n\tAmendment to a high constitutional standard against powerful forces. Using this standard, government neutrality means that religion and religious
\n\tinstitutions must be allowed to thrive freely, but without official endorsement.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe First Amendment, in part, states that \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u201d
\n\tToday, some seek to reinterpret the no establishment provision separating church and state in ways that would require government to financially support
\n\ttheir institutions and enforce their dogmas so as to solve the moral ills of the nation.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOthers seek to marginalize the free exercise of religion in favor of placing a higher level of protection on lifestyles destructive to universal moral
\n\tprinciples sustaining all societies. Both are harmful to our constitutional health. The nation\u2019s Founders anticipated this tension. That is why they
\n\tcreated an internal check and balance within the very wording of the First Amendment in order to prevent the country from being overrun by either extreme
\n\tin the great church-state debate (a puritanical versus godless society). They believed that if this balancing safeguard were somehow removed by overzealous
\n\tpoliticians or the fickle masses, our nation\u2019s constitutional guarantees would be lost, and with it our civil and religious freedoms. As former Associate
\n\tSupreme Court Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor put it in a speech at the University of Ireland: \u201cThe religious zealot and the theocrat frighten us in part
\n\tbecause we understand only too well their basic impulse. No less frightening is the totalitarian atheist who aspires to a society in which the exercise of
\n\treligion has no place.\u201d14\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPBS is to be applauded for its special production of First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty<\/em>. It will help to restore our country\u2019s
\n\tunderstanding of its first freedom.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t1 See Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People<\/em> (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). See also Richard
\n\tL. Bushman, ed., The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745<\/em> (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,
\n\t1989); and Joseph A. Conforti, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture<\/em> (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,
\n\t1995).\n<\/p>\n

\n\t2 See Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays<\/em> (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co.,
\n\t1993).\n<\/p>\n

\n\t3 See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government<\/em>, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).\n<\/p>\n

\n\t4 Thomas Jefferson, Writings<\/em> (New York: The Library of America, 1984), pp. 19-24, final draft version of \u201cA Declaration by the Representatives of
\n\tthe United States of America, in General Congress Assembled.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\t5 James Madison, Writings<\/em> (New York: The Library of America, 1999), p. 10.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t6 Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings<\/em> (Norwalk, Conn.: The Easton Press, 1953), p. 306.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t7 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788<\/em> (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 444.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t8 Letter to Thomas Jefferson, Oct. 17, 1788; in Padover, The Complete Madison, <\/em>p. <\/em> 253.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t9 First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty<\/em> (Public Broadcasting System, 2012).\n<\/p>\n

\n\t10 Robert S. Alley, Without a Prayer: Religious Expression in Public Schools<\/em> (New York: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 56.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t11 Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founders\u2019 Constitution<\/em>, vol. 4, p. 638. \u201cMr. Pinckney moved to add to the art:\u2014\u2018but no religious
\n\ttest shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the authority of the U. States.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\t12 See Greg Hamilton, \u201cThe Revolution of 1800: Jefferson and the Puritan Assault on the Constitution,\u201d Liberty<\/em>, March-April 2001, pp. 2-5.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t13 See Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation<\/em> (New York: Random House, 2006).\n<\/p>\n

\n\t14 Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, \u201cReligious Freedom: America\u2019s Quest for Principles,\u201d Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly<\/em> 48 (1997): 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the truth when it comes to understanding the constitutional principles of the separation of church and state, and the free exercise of religion? In today\u2019s passionate melee over the Health and Human Services\u2019 \u201ccontraception mandate,\u201d and on other issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, the placement of Ten Commandment monuments in public<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[293],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-6213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-june-2013","tag-may-june-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}