LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 326

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326

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

For many American colonists, the pursuit of political liberty was literally a
crusade.

As crucial as the Puritan roots of the American experiment, however,
was the early and persistent experience of ethnic and religious diversity.
The first “engines” of American pluralism were the middle colonies (New
York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland), where most of the world’s existing
Protestant groups were represented. Such diversity required that political
and social unity be based on persuasion, so that “Americans had to invent
what Europeans inherited: a sense of solidarity, a repertoire of national
symbols, a quickening of political passions.” From the beginning, accord-
ing to Os Guinness, “pluralism with all its opportunities and challenges
has been at the heart of ‘the Kirst new nation’—so much so that the Ameri-
can experiment can be viewed as a national embodiment of pluralism and
persuasion as much as it is of freedom.”* The only alternative to such con-
sent, as the Civil War demonstrated, is force.

It was in Virginia that the distinctly American notion of religious free-
dom was formulated. It was Virginia's state constitution, drafted in 1776,
that first proposed a bill of rights guaranteeing that “all men are equally
entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of con-
science, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbear-
ance, love and charity toward the other.” ” The goal was not to limit Chris-
tianity, but to provide for a greater free exercise of it.

Later, the authors of religious liberty in Virginia, particularly Madison
and Jefferson, liked to trace their ideas to ancient philosophers and the
European Enlightenment, but “the core tradition from which the Virginia
liberals drew most of their social ideas was that initiated in England dur-
ing the previous century by John Locke”™ and Locke was self-consciously
Christian. Locke believed that both church and society receive their mean-
ing and direction from God's purpose and design, although each in dis-
tinctly different ways. The church was a voluntary society in which the
primary considerations are spiritual and moral. The civil government, on
the other hand, was designed to advance the material interests of human-
ity. The legitimate interests of church and state overlapped in concern for
moral actions, but Locke did not think that, in a well-ordered society
church and state would necessarily conflict.

Locke's views seem to have been widely shared by the founders of the

“Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt. and Margaret facob, Fellmg the Truth about History (New
York: W.'W. Norton & Company, 1994), 92

“Guinness, 270.
* Quoted in Reichley, be
"Tod. 90.

ernment trom religion.”‘* They believed that religious liberty was good
because it aided genuine Christianity; most believed that in a free society
Christian truth would prevail. Viewing the First Amendment as a leveling
or relativizing of all rehgions would have been unthinkable for thein.4

Religion, therefore, has been an integral part of the American way of
life. While it presents us now with many difficult problems, as yet unre-
solved, the founders of our country were not neutral about religion. The
First Amendment “no more made America a secular state than its anti-
trust legislation made it a socialist state.”** What the Amendment was
designed to do was to create a level playing field with fair competition.
Regarding religion, the government was to be benevolently neutral.

As a result, America has long been a haven for those seeking religious
freedom. Jews and Catholics, in particular, have embraced America—and
that in spite of the nation’s rather Protestant history. it was also to America
that many Germans came seeking free exercise of their confessional
Lutheranism, and they also quickly embraced the virtues of the new land.
Indeed, C. F. W. Walther considered America a place where Luther's Law-
Gospel distinction between spiritual and temporal authority could finally be
realized.” The Missouri Synod convention of 1851 actually authorized a
purely political journal (to promote support for the American political svs-
tem among German Lutheran immigrants), and Walther traveled all the way
to eastern Ontario through winter snowstorms to secure its first editor.”

One of the most remarkable characteristics of American history is that
here such intense religious convictions have caused so little internal strife:
Alexis de Tocqueville’s traveling companion in the early 19th century

“ See Reichley, 113

“ Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, appointed by Madison, wrote that the First
Amendment did not even prevent the government from encouraging Christianity generally
(or discouraging Islam, Judaism, atheism, etc.) but only excluded “all rivalry among Christian
sects.” The general sentiment of the founders, according to Story, was that “Chnstianity
ought to recetve encouragement from the state so far as it was not incompatbie with the pn-
vate rights of conscience and freedom of religious worship.” Quoted in Benjamin Hart, “The
Walt That Protestantism Built.” Policy Review 46 (Fall 1988): 51

“Johnson, 10.

“See, e.g. Walther’s addness on “Earthly Authorities” to the 26th Western District Con-
vention (1885), Essays for the Church, vol. 2, 1877-1886 (St Louis: Concordia Pubhshing
House, 1992). See also Walther’s address on “Church and State” to the Eighth Western Dis-
trict Convention (1862), Essays for the Churck, vol. 1, 1857-1879 (St. Lous: Concordia Pub-
lishing House, 1992)

“ Robert Kolb. “An Histonan’s Reflectons on Luther’s Concept of the Two Govern-
ments” (an unpublished paper delivered to a conference on church and state sponsored by
the LCMS in Washington, D.C., 1n 1986). Kolb elaborates: “At least two matters are worth
observing. the political and religious were sharply differentiated in Walther’s mind: this
pobnical activity received his support and the support of the Synod and congregation.” See
also Arnold F. Krugler, “What If? Missouri Synod’s Political Journal.” The Cresset 38, no. 7
(May 1978): 24-26

American republic. It is part of the paradox of America, as an experiment,
that Christianity should be so closely allied to the American way of life
while so explicitly separated from state support:
The founders were determined that the federal government should not
become involved with sponsorship or institutional support of any relgion
To this end they enacted the establishment clause. But sponsorship or insti-
tutional support is not the same thing as acknowledging the dependence of
civil society, as of all life, on transcendent direction. The founders’ belief in
the wisdom of placing civil society within a framework of religious values
formed part of their reason for enacting the free exercise clause. The First
Amendment is no more neutral on the general value of religion than it is on
the general value of the free exchange of ideas or an independent press.~

Thus, both those who argue that America was conceived as secular and
those who argue that Christianity was in fact the religion of the state over-
state their arguments.”

At first, some of the states continued to have established state church-
es," although this quickly faded in the new republic. While most Ameri-
can citizens believed that Christianity was essential to the success of the
American system, there was strong resistance to defining that Christianity
in terms of any particular creed. George Washington was a conscientious
churchman who nevertheless had little interest in doctrinal disputes.
Alexander Hamilton strongly believed that religion was a necessary foun-
dation for society, yet rejected the idea that the constitution should even
mention God. Thomas Jefferson, in a well-known letter to the Connecticut
Baptists in 1802, described the First Amendment* as “building a wall of
separation between church and state” so that no American could be held
accountable to government for his faith or worship. Thus, the founders of
the American constitutional republic proposed, somewhat paradoxically,
that “functional separation between church and state should be maintained
without threatening the support and guidance received by republican gov-

“Ibid, 165-66

“The United States of America was not. therefore, a secular state; it might more accu-
rately be described as a moral and ethical society without a state religion.” Paul Johnson,
~The Almoust-Chosen People: Why Amenca Is Different.” un Unsecular America. 6.

‘ Reichley (96) notes that, “On the eve of the Revolution, only three colomes had no
Provision for an established church: Rhode Island, Pennsytvania, and Delaware. ... In Mass-
achusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, the Congregational church was established,
with various provisions permitting Anghcans and dissenters to form their own churches,
sometimes with government subsidies. In New York, New lersey, and the five southern
colonies, the Anglican church was established in one form or another.”

° The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no laic respecting an establishment of
retigion. or prohibiting the free cxercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, ut of the
press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and ta petition the government for a
redress of gnevances.” US Const, Amend | (emphasis added).

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marveled at “how a lively and sincere faith can get on with such a perfect
toleration; how one can have equal respect for religions whose dogmas
differ.” Yet, after the Civil War, with the demise of the “states’ rights”
approach to the Constitution and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment,” as well as with increasing pluralism and modernization, church-
state conflicts did begin to emerge with greater frequency and intensity.

One major test of the principle of free exercise of religion was Mor-
mon polygamy. In 1878, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that
polygamy was prohibited in the United States not on the basis of sectan-
an religion, but on the basis of Western moral tradition: “Congress was
deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to
reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of
good order.” This notion of the founders, that the will of “nature's God”
could be clearly discerned and was consistent with the traditions of west-
erm Christendom, remained alive and well in America well into the 20th
century.

Beginning in the 1920s, however, and continuing to the present, the
Supreme Court has attempted with great difficulty to chart a mediating
course between competing moral and religious values by broadly con-
struing the right to pursue one’s religion (including non-Christian, even
atheistic, religious views) under the First Amendment as well as the Four-
teenth, while at the same time broadly construing the establishment
clause of the First Amendment, so as to consider almost all government
support for religion inadmissible. By the 1980s, the Court—along with the
American people generally—had a deeply divided mind: In 1980, the
Court ruled 5-4 that a Kentucky law ordering the posting of the Ten
Commandments in public school rooms was unconstitutional, while in
1981 the Court refused to hear an appeal of a Jower Court decision in
favor of religious Christmas decorations in South Dakota public schools.
In the ensuing years, these thorny issues have continued to occupy the
Court's attention.

* Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America (Vintage, 1945) (316. Quoted in Reichley,
113

“The Fourteenth Amendment includes the following: “No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of lite, liberty, or property, without due process of law:
nor deny to any person within its punisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” US Const.
Amend XIV, 41

™ Reynolds v United States. 9A US 350 (1878), Quoted in Reichley, 121

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