Our enlightened fathers, and why we should separate church and state

Friday's USA Today editorial letters in response to the misleading "Founding Fathers" article (I blogged about it here) were generally good. There were two in agreement, and two in opposition. The opposition actually got more word count this time than the agreement, which is encouraging if the paper is reflecting letter volume in its word count.

One thing that I found problematic in the opposition letters printed is the notion that the Founding Fathers included the separation of church and state clause out of a fear that allowing religion access to government's monopoly on force would lead to tyrany. Though this may have been part of their reasoning I don't think it's the main part. More importantly, the Founders were deeply indebted to Enlightenment principles, and the Enlightment believed in government by reason instead of government by superstition. This was the logic that the courts took account of in the Everson ruling that the "Founding Fathers" article laments.

The logic behind the church/state line was that Kantian morality (morality justified by logic rather than by appeal to what God wants) was better suited to making laws that would govern a diverse population than a religious-based morality. Reason-based morality can be argued over logically by people with differing viewpoints, and can be rationalized based on points of argumentation. In short, it's a better way of arriving at laws that everyone can agree with, because it gives laws that everyone can understand logically. Religious-based morality, on the other hand, often can't be explained to a person outside the religion in a way that the outsider can understand. The Jewish faith, for example, doesn't try to explain to outsiders why it's morally wrong to complete a circuit on the Sabbath, because it's something of a lost cause to justify the 'wrongness' to someone who doesn't share the Jewish faith. The idea was that laws made under a religious-based system would be points of division instead of unity.

There are other good reasons to separate church and state, but that's the big one, and it's also the one that never enters the argument when people talk about this divide. Maybe the underlying principles are too complex for the public discourse, but I'm optimist enough to think that's not the case. I think it just doesn't occur to your everyday Joe Christian when he talks about whether the state should post the 10 Commandments. I'm a Christian, and I consider myself devout, but for the reasons above I'd be ashamed of my nation if it did.