“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” These are the first ten words of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. With these words, the founding fathers sought to prevent the formal establishment of a national church, similar to the Church of England, which governed the religious practices of a nation. However, over 200 years later, they have been twisted to prevent the involvement and support of religion in and by government. Mansfield’s book, Ten Tortured Words, is a good overview of the issues surrounding the Establishment Clause and how it has been used and misused by people to make this clause mean something other than it originally meant. While this is no in-depth history book, and is not meant to be, I believe that it covers the pertinent information well and describes the process by which the Establishment Clause has been taken out of context. This is a controversial subject, to say the least, and usually fires up emotions on both sides of the issue, as illustrated by the varying ratings at Amazon.com. But this book ought to be required reading by Christians as a short primer on what is at stake.
The first chapter explains what the fathers founded. Mansfield states in discussing the final version of the amendment, “Congress was not only forbidden to establish an official religion, but it was forbidden to make a law that even dealt with the issue of an establishment of religion.” That said, there is no evidence in the debates that Congress intended with this amendment to establish a secular state. The issue also was restricted to the national government. It was the founders intent that the national government should have enumerated powers, but not so much that it encroached on the sovereignty and power of the individual states. Of course today, the states have little to no real power, while the national government has all of the real power.
The next chapter deals with the famous (or infamous, as the case may be) letter of the Danbury Baptists to President Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson’s response. The famous clause (and metaphor) “building a wall of separation between Church and State…” These seven words have provided the basis of contemporary law with respect to religion in America. Unfortunately, they have been completely taken out of context. Nowhere does Jefferson intend to prevent government support or encouragement of religion, but the context is such that he is reassuring the Baptists that the national government will make no law establishing a national religion, nor make any law that prohibits the free exercise of their religion, as they had feared. Jefferson was assuring the Baptists that he would not, nor could Congress, prevent them from their free exercise of religion. As Mansfield states, “Jefferson clearly believed that the wall of separation was not between all government and all religion, but rather between the national or federal government and religion, leaving the states free to be as religious as the wanted to be.” Mansfield later continues, “Fearing a national religion enforced by a centralized government, the Framers of the First Amendment had forbidden the federal government from passing any law that would create an established religion, meaning a State religion or a national church.”
Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the turning point, and what he calls faith-based blackmail of the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, among others. Chapter 3 deals with the landmark case Everson vs. Board of Education in 1947. Mansfield explains this case, why it was important, and the distorted logic and reasoning of Justice Hugo Black, who wrote the majority opinion of the case. Unfortunately, Black grossly misused Jefferson’s wall statement, distorted the founding fathers and over 150 years of American historical and legal precedent, and created a situation in which religion, namely Christianity, was shut out of public life. It also documents very briefly the shift of power after the Civil War from state power to federal power, something the founding fathers tried so hard to prevent, and what has only recently been a major shift in thinking. Mansfield lists a number of cases in which this ruling has been used to literally shut out any vestige of religion from any public event. It is tragic and sad, and made my stomach turn at times. The very foundations of what this country was founded upon has been turned on its head and now religion has been deemed a public menace. The law that was supposed to protect the free practice of religion has now been used to shut down the free practice of religion in the public square.
Mansfield’s brief history of the ACLU is thoroughly enlightening, and has caused me to add some books on the history of this organization to my reading list. The American Civil Liberties Union is anything but what its name implies.
Mansfield includes some great appendices that should be required reading as well, particularly Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent in Wallace vs Jaffree. This case was over an Alabama law that required each school day begin with a prayer or a moment of silent meditation. The rule was upheld by the District Court but was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because it violated the Establishment Clause. Rehnquist’s dissent is a classic piece of argument that calls for the abandonment of Jefferson’s “wall of separation of church and state” metaphor and includes an overview of the original intentions of the founding fathers and a critical analysis of the court’s establishment Clause rulings.
All in all, this is a great primer, though not perfect, of this issue. It is very short, basically 150 pages or so, and I read it in an afternoon. Some other recommended resources that provide more depth include Real Threat and Mere Shadow: Religious Liberty and the First Amendment by Daniel L. Dreisbach, and Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction by Robert L. Cord. Some other resources at American Vision include Myth of Separation Between Church and State by Dee Wampler, and Wall of Misconception by Peter Lillback.
