Dear Speaker Johnson, Thank God for the Separation of Church and State
The separation of church and state isn't a misnomer
On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called the separation of church and state a “misnomer.”
"The separation of church and state is a misnomer," Johnson said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
"People misunderstand it," he continued. "Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite."
This is classic David Barton and shows that “profound influence” Johnson said Barton has had on him.
Here is David Barton telling Matthew and Laurie Crouch what he believes separation of church and state means.
This is dated May, 2010. The Speaker of the House on Tuesday repeated the same interpretation of the First Amendment as Christian nationalist political operative David Barton has been promoting for decades.
It is clear from Jefferson’s letter back to the Danbury Baptist Association that he meant to refer to the First Amendment when he used the image of a “wall of separation.” He wrote:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
Jefferson said the First Amendment built a wall of separation between church and state. Barton and Johnson want that wall to be one-directional and allow the church to cross over into the state. Was Jefferson friendly to that idea? Not at all.
A letter to Benjamin Rush from Jefferson makes it clear that Jefferson understood the First Amendment to separate church and state. In a letter dated September 23, 1800, Jefferson firmly negated any notion of religion being imposed on the government. Domestic unrest and fears of war during the Adams administration had unsettled the public and, according to Jefferson, had given some in the clergy a hope of establishing their denomination “through the United States.” Jefferson told Rush that such hopes were being thwarted by “good sense” and his candidacy for president.
The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Jefferson had no interest in a one-directional wall. While individual religious expression was protected, religious establishments, de facto or official, were objects of his “eternal hostility.”
Johnson and Barton are quick to reject the idea of a state church. However, their Christian privilege either deceives them or they use it to attempt to deceive others. Passing laws which require the Ten Commandments in every classroom, or allow chaplains to substitute for school counselors lead to a de facto establishment of religion. In practice, laws like these are de facto establishments of Christianity since these are the cases which Barton and Johnson defend. Knowing Alliance Defending Freedom, Mike Johnson’s old employer, I am pretty sure the freedom they defend is Christian freedom.
Johnson, like his mentor Barton, wants the Bible in classrooms. How is this not an establishment of Christianity? And worse for Christians, in my view, is the answer to this question: how is it not an abomination to have the state usurping the role of the church in religious instruction by having public school teachers leading prayers and Bible reading? This is another objection to the Barton-Johnson interpretation which I will come back to in a later post.
We have an entire section in Getting Jefferson Right on the Danbury Letter and the wall of separation imagery. In fact in this edition of the book, we spent a significant amount of space discussing church and state relations in light of the recent surge of Christian nationalism. I will let a quote from the new edition close out this post.
With some Christian conservatives calling for the government to privilege Christianity over other religions, Jefferson’s words are important for us to remember. While we do not know what Jefferson would do in every case today, we can look at one of his supreme achievements for some light. Whatever Jefferson intended by the metaphor of a “wall of separation between church and state,” he surely did not mean to privilege Christianity over other faiths or no faith at any level of government. He wanted the freedom of conscience protections to broadly extend beyond Christianity and even beyond religion. Good and reasonable people disagreed then and will continue to disagree about the judicial application of the First Amendment. What is clear is that Jefferson would today oppose efforts of activists to gain favored status for their religion. (p. 89)
Johnson is a pure theocrat. I believe one could tell him exactly why Barton is full of it, and provide overwhelming proof, and he would serenely persist in his error.
He is a danger to the preservation of the Constitution, and a menace for those who are of different, or no, faith.
I do not believe their Christian privilege deceives them. They never hesitate to Lie For Jesus. They want the church (or rather, their Dominionist definition of The Church) to run the government. Someone prove me wrong. Someone prove where people like Barton and Johnson follow the dictates of Jesus of Nazareth. Show me the receipts. Show me people (and animals which are also part of God's Creation) are fed and sheltered. Show me the love for one's enemies as well as one's friends. Show me the welcome for the stranger, the care for the sick, seeing to the needs of the widows and orphans, the ministering to the captive. Show me where you do these things in the name of our Savior, and show me how your Christian beliefs DROVE you to do these things.
Otherwise, you're just a person standing in a garage, declaring yourself to be a Cadillac.