Freethinkers of Colorado Springs ESSAY CONTEST FIRST PLACE Faithful to the Founders? by Ken Burrows: September 2014

Faithful to the Founders?

by Ken Burrows


The May 5th Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway concluded that the practice by the Greece, NY, town board of opening its meetings with predominantly Christian prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. This ruling greenlights a certain religious imposition on those citizens attending the town board meetings who see themselves as excluded or at least marginalized by being subjected to official governmental prayer, sectarian in nature, that effectively endorses a faith they do not themselves subscribe to.

Justice Anthony Kennedy in writing the Greece opinion insisted it “faithfully reflects the understanding of the Founding Fathers.” But does it?

James Madison, chief draftsman of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, author of a pioneering and much emulated religious freedom law in Virginia, would find Justice Kennedy’s assurance to be quite fanciful. Arguably the two most influential architects of church-state relations, these two key Founders were at best wary of governmental prayer and at times aggressively against it. Not because they were hostile to religion in general (both were deistic believers) but because it was precisely the mingling of government and religion that they were committed to avoid.

Madison said “a perfect separation” between ecclesiastical and civil matters is important, and “religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” In a post-presidency Detached Memorandum, he was even more specific, saying members of government and other public officials cannot address the faith or consciences of the people because such actions “…imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion.”

For his part Jefferson said religion was a subject he considered to be “a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, has a right to intermingle.” In his 1786 Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom, he strongly criticized “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers” who endeavor to impose their faith on others, saying those who do so establish “false religions.” He flatly stated “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.”

Compare these stances by Founders against the Court’s Greece opinion, which tells citizens who see offense in being subjected to governmental prayer that they are free to leave the room, arrive late, or lodge a protest afterward. In short, the majority justices say if government wants to pray and even promote a specific faith, it can. This is the kind of mindset the Founders fomented a revolution against. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention underscored this desire to separate church and state by going so far as to reject suggestions to bring prayer into their deliberations. The Greece town board’s public prayer habit thus turns history on its head, no matter Kennedy’s protestation to the contrary.

In his famed Memorial and Remonstrance opposing government support for religion, Madison said religion is “not within the cognizance of the civil government,” and the only religious homage a person owes is “such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.”

That sort of resounding clarity about keeping government and religion separated is something Kennedy and his concurring justices apparently cannot understand, or are unwilling to accept. But they ought not rewrite history to say the Founders would agree with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Published September 24, 2014 with the quotation below.

"When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so as citizens, not s members of one faith or another."  

Elena Kagan, dissent to Greece vs. Galloway