In a fascinating article, Leah Farish argues that the revised Westminster Confession offers an interpretive framework for 1st Amendment Establishment Clauses. The argument reinforces the separation of church and state powers. However, the twist is that this was not from an agnostic Enlightenment ideal, but from the content of the Westminster Confession itself as revised at the same time the Constitution was being written. In particular, Farish argues the language of "free exercise" of religion is derived from the revised Westminster Confession itself.
The Founders’ religious heritage motivated them to accord procedural protection for those who did not share their religion, because Reformed Christianity naturally spreads individual civil liberties and a concept of public service within a culture. The landscape of the Confessors and Founders is one in which Christian presuppositions underlie public policy, and the government avoids interfering with and even protects religious groups, to the degree of allowing local variations in what is understood to be an impermissible establishment of religion. It is a landscape where the Christian elements of the nation’s heritage and traditions are affirmed. It even allows for a degree of preference and support for “the church of our common Lord” that today would not be tolerated by many Americans. Yet in the same landscape dwell those who deeply disagree with Christianity, and those who are undecided or uninterested in it. And those too are afforded freedom and safety.
Of particular note, Farish also makes a case that the language of the 1st Amendment was likely written by Fisher Ames rather than James Madison. Ames was more flexible with the idea of a state established religion (as opposed to a federal establishment) than James Madison who was more adamant about state disestablishment altogether.
Madison, …, was wandering further from, not closer to, what proved to be the winning approach when he tried to split the provisions, disestablish religions even at the state level, and insert his two ideas in various places in the text of the Constitution.
Implied throughout is the notion that religion offers a unifying force in the colonies which is likely the reason for its protection through the 1st Amendment clause. Over the next 40 years after the Constitution, Madison's side would prove to win out in the end as Massachusetts was the last colony to disestablish the state sponsored religion. Indeed, as Farish quotes Voltaire, this view is what the courts have been consistent in upholding as the religion in the nation would become progressively more pluralistic which is evident by the current religious landscape of the United States.
“If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut each other’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.”
What this article does do is show just how powerful the Presbyterian establishment was at the time. It also reveals the influence of Calvinism with its emphasis on law and order in the drafting of the Constitution. The irony is that this very influence cultivated the soil for progressive religious disestablishment. When combined with Enlightenment discontent over religious establishment, complete disestablishment was only a matter of time. It's ironic that the idea of "the United States is a Christian nation" was undermined long ago by the very language of "free exercise" which derived its energy from Christian tradition itself.
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This interpretation accords with my understanding of what the Establishment Clause means and how our founders meant it to operate.
I come to my continued strong support of the separation of church and state from my own long spiritual journey, one I have not taken lightly but at the same time have not taken so seriously that I ignore the fact of the different spiritual paths my fellow citizens choose to take (or not).
I tell people I'm a PresbyJewBu, born a Presbyterian, converted to Reform Judaism at age 23, and moved on to Korean Zen Buddhism at age 46. My Buddhist name, Il'tal, means unconventional.
I've written about this journey elsewhere – http://www.floridafreethinkers.com/448/a-spirit....
As a former Christian/now nontheist, I find the push by the Christian right to rewrite American history to make disheartening, short-sighted, and dangerous. I certainly concur that:
“If one religion only were allowed [in England], the government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut each other’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.”