Virtue Magazine

If I were to tell a conservative that I believed separation of Church and State was constitutional, one of the first things they would do would be to ask me if I believed in God. But believing in God is not what determines the constitutionality of the idea of separation. A conservative’s view of separation of Church and State is that the liberals are trying to say it’s in the constitution and therefore we must take God, religious morals, and what not out of the government. That definition is indeed unconstitutional, but it is not the one meant. It does not say ‘separation of God and State’ or ‘separation of Religious Morals and State’.

Now, if I were to tell a liberal that I believed separation of Church and State was unconstitutional, they would immediately brand me a religious bigot. After all, if I think it’s unconstitutional, that means I want to have the United States accept Christianity as their official religion, right? To them, someone saying it is unconstitutional is as if they were saying that the United States should go and have an official, Christian religion. Therefore, in order to prevent that, we must divorce all religion from the government. Which, as I have previously stated is unconstitutional.

If these definitions are unconstitutional, then how can I claim that this separation of Church and State is constitutional? Mayhap because the definition that is constitutional is not one that has yet been mentioned. Separation of Church and State does not say that the government must be separate from religious morals or from God. Rather, it says that the Church and the State must be separate. If, say, this were an institutional separation, as in the Church cannot control the State, nor the State control the Church, is this constitutional?

Amendment I to the United States Constitution starts out by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Suppose we look at this Freedom of Religion clause in regards to our institutionalized definition. They fit together, do they not? The Freedom of Religion clause states that Congress (the State) can’t make a law establishing or prohibiting religion (the Church). Yes! They fit, they make sense, and separation of Church and State is constitutional! We can’t separate religious morals from the State, because if we were to take away anything that stemmed from religion we would be left with very little, if anything at all. Yet here, here we can separate the two institutions, and still be constitutional. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s. The two institutions are to be separate, with neither one controlling the other. And it is perfectly legal under our federal Constitution. Now go out, and let people know that both liberals and conservatives have a little piece of the truth. It’s time to put them together.