Authority from the Governed, not from God Church-State Separation Stands to Reason
by John Hodges

(This article first appeared in the Roanoke Times on Wednesday, October 31, 2001.)

Questions about what the law says are secondary to what it should say; debates over what the founders intended are important (revisionist history is written for a reason), but secondary to why they intended it and whether they were right in their views.

The founders were revolutionaries, taking their historical opportunity to make a society that did things differently from precedent. For centuries, indeed for ages, religion and government had been allied; tribal leaders, Roman emperors and European kings claimed the support of divine powers for their authority. The view that earthly governments get their authority from God was expressed in the Bible , though hardly for the first time.

The record of divinely anointed government was not good. Those who think they rule by the grace of God are tempted to think they are justified in delivering hellfire upon their critics and opponents; tyranny and persecution were the norm. In Europe, because Christianity had broken into factions (despite all the efforts of the Catholic church) wars of religion had raged, decade after decade.

The American founders were intending to set up a society of free men; they rejected the idea of divinely anointed government, holding that free men could govern themselves. Government would get its authority from the consent of the governed. The Constitution was a peace treaty under which, it was hoped, all possible factions were to work out their differences by rational discussion and voting.

However partial their vision may have been, or imperfect the execution of it in historical America, I think it is plain that we have avoided the state tyranny, church corruption and religious warfare that had wracked Europe.

The idea that the actions of government were to be based on reason, that the government was neither competent nor authorized to rule on religious issues, that individuals were to be free in their religious lives, that churches were to be neither suppressed nor privileged by the government was a radical idea, contrary to the Christian tradition, contrary to the Bible.

Many of those who supported it (then and today) were Christians themselves, yet they supported it because they knew there were many different brands of Christianity, and their own brand was not guaranteed to get on top, or stay there, and felt that the disagreements between Christians should not be settled by force. Also, many of the founders were Deists, holding what was itself a radical view: that "revelation," specifically including the Bible, was wholly untrustworthy, and religion should be based on reason only.

Among modern critics of state/church separation, there are some radical theocrats, "Christian reconstructionists" who wish to enact the laws of Moses. Others take a more moderate position, saying that they don't wish to establish an official church, but merely to have the government encourage religion in general, because religion is where we get morality, and morality is essential for a civilized society, even more for a free one.

Some don't even support that, but merely support political advocacy on explicitly religious grounds; that citizens may, and should, support legislation based on their religious views, with no other grounds required. They say, "The First Amendment was meant to protect religion from the government, not the government from religion."

But I say this "moderate" position is wrong on several counts. Morality is about maintaining peaceful and cooperative relations with your neighbors; religion sometimes supports this and sometimes not, and whatever it supports, it does so on nonrational grounds. Morality is, indeed, essential to a free people, but such morality as we need can and should be based on reason. Faith and revelation are not open to reasoned argument; disagreements can be settled only by force.

The government gets its authority from us, and "We, the People" have not given it the authority to rule on religious matters. Whether monotheism is true and good, or false and evil, is not the government's business to say.

Citizens may advocate whatever laws they like, on whatever grounds they like; those who advocate altering the Constitution to establish a theocracy have a perfect right to do so. But I also have the right to say that they are wrong and should not get the support of people who wish to remain free.

Similarly, those who advocate laws on religious grounds may do so, and I will point out that such grounds are arbitrary and subjective, based on feelings and mythology instead of reason.

I further say such advocacy is contrary to the spirit (though not the letter) of the peace treaty that is the Constitution. For if a law has no rational, secular basis, and is passed only because of popular theological views, then the force of law is being used by one religion to establish itself, to that degree.

Down that road lies religious war, and the death of freedom.

---------------------------------- John B. Hodges, jbhodges@ @usit.net

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