Conservatives complain constantly that “mainstream media” (or “MSM” as it is usually abbreviated in right-wing blogs, derisively) are biased to the left. That’s much contrary to my experience, as a reporter, as a PR flack, and as a consumer of news.
I do expect a striving for balance, however. So I was surprised to find, in an on-line test of American history and government at the site of Newsweek Magazine, that conservative misinformation about religious freedom had crept into “MSM.” A poster, Bernarda, pointed to the poll in comments to an earlier post.
When I saw this question, I rather expected Newsweek might have made the turn to the right — but I answered as the law is anyway. As you can see from what I copied off the answer screen, below, Newsweek’s poll said the legal answer is wrong:
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The idea that there should be a wall of separation between church and state was rather carefully and ambitiously developed in law by George Mason, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in Virginia, starting in 1776 with the Virginia Bill of Rights, and perhaps climaxing in 1786 when Madison engineered the passage of Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom (one of the three things Jefferson thought noteworthy for his tombstone, above even his two-terms as president), and continuing through the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Within a year of his legislative coup in Virginia, Madison was masterminding the convention in Philadelphia that wrote the Constitution, well aware of the need for separating the ecclesiastical from the secular government. Madison was also the chief sponsor of the twelve amendments proposed in 1789 that became the Bill of Rights (with ten of the amendments adopted almost immediately, and an eleventh becoming the 27th Amendment, 200 years later!).
Separation of church and state is part of the warp and woof of the Constitution. At each turn, where a formal role for a church might be, or where there might be a formal role for government in religion, the Constitution picks a secular path instead. So in Articles I, II, and III, spelling out the functions of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, the Constitution gives no formal role to any religious body, and no religious privilege or duty to any part of government. Article IV deals with the organization of the states under the new structure, and while it guarantees that each state shall have a republican form of government, it also carefully avoids granting any religion any role in state government, or any role in religion to any state government. Article VI seals the separation of state and church, with an absolute ban on religious tests for all offices in government, federal or state. The only case that has ever come close to testing Article VI dealt with the issue as a First Amendment issue — reaffirming that the First Amendment is simply a powerful restatement of our religious freedoms.
It is true that the phrase about a wall of separation comes from the 1802 letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptist church in Danbury, Connecticut; the letter itself was written in Jefferson’s capacity as president, and was carefully structured by Jefferson and Attorney General Levi Lincoln to be an official proclamation from the executive about just exactly what the law of the land is on freedom of religion — that is, they told the Danbury Baptists that the State of Connecticut could not abridge their religious freedoms by establishing a state church because the U.S. Constitution forbids it.
There is a large number of people who wish to weaken religious freedom in the U.S. who have adopted a cry that “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution. They are wrong. The idea is there, the structure is carefully laid out through five of the original seven articles, and then reified in the First Amendment.
Jefferson didn’t invent the idea in 1802. He merely described it. Newsweek’s test is in error — that may be why only about 1 in 4 of the high school students who answered the poll gave the answer Newsweek wanted. The students may have known better. (Optimistic, ain’t I?)
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[…] I do expect a striving for balance, however. So I was surprised to find, in an on-line test of American history and government at the site of Newsweek Magazine, that conservative misinformation about religious freedom had crept into “MSM.” A post … Posted by edarrellSo good. what do you think?Link to original article […]
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Oh, high school seniors! I thought “seniors” meant people my age when I first saw the number of 27.2. I wouldn’t have thought even that many young people would have known the phrase “wall of separation” was in a letter from Jefferson. Maybe some of them were just guessing. It’s been many years since I heard that’s where this phrase comes from, sometime after the Supreme Court struck down school-mandated prayer. I wouldn’t expect it to be common knowledge. I suppose it’s in the text of those who proclaim loudly that “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution, but how many people actually read that far past the headlines? I’m not sure I ever did for that particular headline.
So the concept of separation of church and state is in the Constitution, but not those exact words. How absolute a separation is it? How high, long and thick is that wall? Does it have a gate? Some people spin that one way. Other people spin that another. Words are ambiguous. I find myself making this same conclusion from many arguments about words.
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