The US Constitution does not state or give any guidance on what the relationship
between the Church and the State should be other than that the State cannot make laws that
infringe on the free exercise of religion. Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptist
Association in 1802 speaks of a “wall of separation between Church and State” (Jefferson, 1802)
and this document has been used to argue that the Constitution has a separation between Church
and State. But what Jefferson meant illustrates the relationship that is to be between these two
institutions and that is the relationship is one of jurisdictional and institutional.
The institution of the Church has its jurisdiction in the realm of the spiritual and has no
legal authority to punish the sins of man outside the confines of what scripture gives. The
institution of the State has its jurisdiction in that it has the legal authority to create law or policies
in the secular world. The First Amendment limited the States powers and ultimately put it in a
box separate from the institution of the Church to protect the freedoms of the states and citizens
as some states still had established churches.
The State did not oppose religion though in fact the government embraced it and
encouraged, that it would be tolerated, respected, and encouraged; were the founders knew the
line had to been drawn was at taking sides and pushing the scales down in favor of one over the
other (Metaxas, 2017, 73). Religion was needed to embrace freedom because the Founders knew
that for self-governance to work the people would need to be virtuous, and virtue came from
faith in a religion. Virtue would prosper if religion was free from the rule and authority of
government. The Founders “were committed to the idea that religion was necessary for public
happiness and political prosperity” (Hall, 2020).
In today’s view of the relationship between Church and State as a country we have what
appears to me, lost sight of the virtue that the Founders and Tocqueville saw as a necessity for a
free republic to survive. I say that because we have almost if not completely shunned religion
from the public square. The heart of man in my opinion has drifted away from God and the
morals that His Word teaching us. As the Founders clearly understood for self-governance to be
prosperous a “moral and religious people” would be the key. Another example is how we have
looked more to the government for the solution to our problems and less to the Church and God.
References:
Hall, Mark David. 2020. “Did America Have a Christian Founding?” The Heritage Foundation.
Accessed March 27. https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/did-america-have-
christian-founding.
“Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists The Final Letter, as Sent.” 2020. Jefferson's Letter to
the Danbury Baptists (June 1998) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin. Accessed March
26. https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html.
Metaxas, Eric. 2017. If You Can Keep It: the Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. New York:
Penguin Books.
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