Separation of Church and State in the U.S.

The United State's Separation of Church and State raises a lot of things to consider. Here are a few.

Back in the U.S. public school I attended, I wasn't taught much, and asking questions was verboten: I mean, real questions "outside the box". When I got to university I asked a professor I liked why American high schools didn't teach philosophy, or economics as in how to invest money, how one can, over decades, build up a sizeable wealth by consist investments, and so on. He laughed at me and said I was a fool. That those were the kinds of things that a public school would never teach me. Had I no sense at all? Public ed was to make "team players" who were "cogs in the machine" and NOT part of the "Herrenvolk", the ruling elite. Had I no sense?

Precious little, it seemed. One of the things we were taught was that the Constitution granted religious freedom so religion could profit. Religion was "free" from state control. Unfortunately, the Devils is (always) in the details. In fact, the OPPOSITE was true: it was the GOVERNMENT was "free" (at last, for the first time since Constantine the Great, in fact). The Constitution absolutely defanged and humiliated religion: it took away any power the various Protestant Churches possessed. There weren't that many that existed in the colonies at that time – a mere handful of denominations, you know. Only a mere handful existed in the entire world. As for the American colonies, some of these were "state" churches, formally recognized by law. But that didn't last long after 1787, the year when the US Constitution was adopted.

So, for the first time in history, there was no national cult. Think whatever you wanted, worship however you liked, just keep it personal. More importantly, don't expect any church of any sort to have any influence in governing. The result was "the powers that be" could do whatever they wanted without fear of moral sanction. Well, public opinion could and did influence government, but government could influence that too. (Since 1787, that's become an art.) But without any kind of Tribunal veto, the churches were just window dressing for scenic towns. In any event, free at last from Christianity, governments go do whatever they could get away with. Public opinion here or there would suffice to change this or that law or course of action, maybe, but, as the ancient Romans knew, the mob is fickle. Today's hero is tomorrow's exile.

Now, I mean, this is SO true, and played out SO horribly in history, that it amazes me SO many don't see it. The churches no longer had ANY real say in state affairs (federal government affairs, and the state govs that had established church laws soon followed the Federal suit because it freed the states of all religious interference – for the simple truth is that politicians, FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE Constantine the Great, it was a case of "Free at last, free at last, thank the Devil we're free at last!). And this is true: ALL governments in ALL of human history had some sort of state religion, which influenced them in fundamental ways, good or bad. That's why (usually) in history, the Catholic Church sought to convert the local rulers, who then got their people to convert (St Patrick going to the High King is an example, but such stories abound in Church history). Converts were always made of any social class, of course, slave or free, whenever the opportunity arose. But everyone just understood that religion, cult, belief, the favor of the gods and the Mandate of Heaven was central for a state to not only for it to rule, because that rule had to be divinely sanctioned, but simply to survive, too.

(That's interesting also in the sense that for the first time in history a government could, in effect, thumb its nose and God and not expect any retaliation. That in turn helped to undermine religious faith. "Gee, the gods didn't strike down King So-and-so, therefore, they must not exist!")

The U.S. tossed all that. One has to understand how this works to understand American history – the insanely bloody U.S. Civil War, for example, or the miserable treatment of the Indians – and world history too, because our system spread throughout the world. Slavery is a good example of what I mean.

In Latin American countries that had slavery (Brazil, or the French Louisiana territory at the time Jefferson bought it, to name two examples) slaves had rights guaranteed by Holy Church. They weren't much, you might say: the right to be baptized, marry sacramentally, etc., and their children could not be sold until a certain age: families were intact. But once Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory, the FIRST THING HE DID was CANCEL those rights the slaves had. Slavery in "the land of the free and home of the brave" was "chattel" slavery. Chattel is furniture, or any movable, disposable property. An American slave owner could thus sell nursing mothers away from their infants if he so desired (wet nurses were always available). And the Churches had NO SAY WHATEVER about what individuals did. Mary Chestnut, a diarist, wrote about "the common evil" of children around a plantation house resembling the Master (in various colors). What plantation master wanted a preacher harassing him for that? Still less would they tolerate some formal state-connected religious interference.

Now, there WERE Southern Protestant ministers who were outraged at slavery, to be sure, (southern Catholics – and a lot of northern ones too – generally supported slavery) and preached their throats raw roaring against it, and prophesying doom because of it. They were call the "Southern Jeremiads." Ever hear of them? No? Because they had no influence. They had no power to influence, nothing but "moral persuasion" and that worked THEN no better than it does NOW (see: Kennedy, Ted; Pelosi, Nancy, or whomever you want; there's a lot of "moralistic" talk today, but little moral sense, as people can belong to a Church that teaches X (say, the Catholic Church's position on abortion) and that has members completely embracing the opposite position (such as the politicians noted above) with no apparent sense of hypocrisy (on the part of either the person involved or the Church itself).

Meanwhile, and this is important for everyone to understand, because religion was powerless, a wholly private enterprise, one's personal business, so overnight HUNDREDS of Protestant denominations sprang up. Then thousands! (C.S. Lewis says somewhere that you'll know the Bible is being read less and less when more and more translations of it appear. Same with religious faith, it seems.) Where in the world did you think they all came from? The U.S. 1787 Constitution. When a Trad Catholic today thinks of Protestantism, they think of 20,000 different denominations. But that ONLY began to appear once religion was totally disconnected for the state.

In terms of the U.S. and Catholicism, before Vatican II turned it into a soap opera of sorts, part NGO and part continuing Peyton Place sex scandal mill, it was THE most important religious voice in the world, bar none. The secular Herren Volk who created the U.S. Constitution clearly wanted to defang it. And naturally, the Protestants were foolish enough to play into their hands because they too, feared the Church. They feared the Church because it has a tremendous knowledge of the Faith from living with it for 2,000 years. It has answers, questions, spirituality of every sort. Protestantism was founded by ardent individuals, but no individual can intellectually beat a foe who has hundreds of great theologians from a variety of cultures answer every sort of question anyone can come up with. And they feared it because the Church back in 1787, and thanks to the successes Counter-Reformation Church, and the near total success of the Hapsburgs before Richelieu and the infamous "Treason of France" turned a German civil war into the horrible international disaster known as the Thirty Years War and lost much of Germany to the Faith, had a reputation of getting Protestant-ruled lands Catholic again.

Proof of that involves a lot of Continental Church history and also the whole 100s of years' long effort to restore England to Catholicism.

Creating an officially godless government, as the U.S. did at its founding, was a simple way to remove THAT threat.





An Préachán