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The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness

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"The founding fathers established the Constitution, and over 94 percent of it is directly from the Bible." Those are the words of Lee Behnken, an active promoter of PSCA, an organization dedicated to putting chaplains in our public schools. Evangelicals like Behnken often make such statements, and in doing so show their abysmal knowledge of the Constitution and those who developed it.

There actually is no mention of God in the Constitution, and the only reference it makes to religion is in article 6 where it states that there shall be no religious test for political office. A current tragedy is that religious conservatives have, indeed, established informal religious tests of office through their "voting guides".

In developing the constitution men like Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison were strongly influenced by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke who believed that the function of Government was solely to keep the peace. While religious enthusiasts like to point out the section of the Declaration of Independence that states that our "Creator" endowed us with certain unalienable rights, they seem unable to thoroughly assess the meaning of the following words that state these rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are secular attributes of government, i.e. that the state should protect us, and our property, and keep us free. And that is exactly the role envisioned by our Founders. Government should not promote religious laws that place restriction on our basic freedoms. Government should not decide moral issues.

Jefferson and the others felt that when religion was involved in government it corrupted government and degraded religion. He felt it absurd that politicians should be the interpreters of the will of God. God, said Jefferson, needs no government officials to speak for Him.

Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison did not want religion mixed with politics, and this book provides us with an excellent exposition of their views. Many Christians were very upset with the "godless constitution" and founded various organizations that from 1863 to 1945 fought for an amendment that would provide a statement in the preamble "acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government..". They, fortunately, have never been successful.

This is not a conservative versus liberal book. It is a concise overview of the question of church state seperation under the First Amendment. Is there an absolute wall? If so, on what basis and why? The authors cover the history of the Amendment and the challenges to its interpretation by those with a theocratic bent and others who oppose political domination by religious majorities. This reader is a conservative voter who found the work well worth reading and sound in its arguments and conclusions. Those who favour liberty will find much on which they agree with the authors.

Currently, we don't have an informed discussion of the wall of separation between religion and politics, between faith and law, in the media. Instead, we have shouting matches free of information that might help end some of the disputes.

Karmnick and Moore set out to provide a brief, readable primer on (1) what the Framers had in mind when they separated Church and State, (2) what thinkers or events informed their conclusions, and (3) what relevance all of this has to the current debates on school prayer, tax-exempt status for churches, and other issues.

Their argument is hard to argue with. The "no religious test for public office" clause (and the debate it generated) in the Constitution is their starting point for understanding what Madison, Jefferson, and others had on their minds when they wrote the core documents of American politics, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And there's a lot more critical background they discuss, such the Lockean view of the secular social contract between citizens and the government they create, and the religious arguments by people like Roger Williams and others in the 17th and 18th centuries against intermingling politics and religion. It's pretty clear what the Framers had in mind, and it was to keep religion and politics separate to the advantage of both.

By the way, Steven Tooley's rebuttals here on Amazon are completely disingenuous and hit not the core of the book's arguments, but peripheral matters. He misunderstands Locke, a man of profound faith who also felt that government was not sanctioned by God, but created by human beings to serve very specific purposes. And for a guy who complains about "ad homein" [sic] attacks, Tooley doesn't hesitate to make comments like, "Are these two professors trying to pull the wool over everyone eyes for a reason, or have they themselves been brainwashed?" Read the book (which contains a lot of quotes from primary sources, by the way) and decide for yourself.

This is a "must read" for anyone wanting to understand the relationship between government and religion leading up to, and just after ratification of our Constitution. Over the past several years there has been a plethora of books published that have tried to distort that relationship for current political gain. Consider this a partial "corrective action" to what is essentially propaganda from some authors with no scholarly credentials.

As much as I enjoyed reading this book however, there are several concerns that I have regarding this book that doesn't make this the "end-all" regarding the debate about the role our founding fathers had in mind regarding religion. First, the authors leadoff with a chapter that sets the stage for "why this book at this time". Unfortunately this is not a good start for these authors writing this particular book. The authors are near perfect in their ability to provide a true picture of our actual history in the middle chapters, but as analysts, the authors get into taking sides politically prior to making their case. I would have preferred saving the analysis for the end, besides, the history is the most fascinating aspect of the book.

In addition many people who need to receive this message, i.e., the religious right who have been fed propaganda by religious leaders like Dobson, Kennedy, and Robertson, could be put off by what they may sense is doctrine opposite, and thus negatively provocative, of what they believe is our true heritage. It would be a shame for these people to dismiss the book after the first chapter when this book would be more helpful to them than any other category of reader.

What I did like about the book was the discussion about where the idea for a secular government came from, Locke, Williams, Paine, and how the framers developed those philosophies into our current Constitution. While riveting, this discussion is not complete. Another aspect I enjoyed was rather than just going into what our framers' intentions were regarding the creation of a secular government, the authors also discussed the documentation and verbal debates of the framers' opponents that promoted a non-secular government. This makes it self-evident that there were sides to this debate back then and who was on which side and those on the side of secularism were clearly the framers, contrary to what some current day propagandists would have you believe.

The authors did an especially fine job of portraying the motivation for many devout Christians to create a secular government. The book features Roger Williams, an extremely devout Christian, who supported a secular government to "free churches from the designs of political men". In fact, there is a nice trail that leads from Williams in the 17th Century, to ratification of the Constitution, to the success of Baptists in building a base of members by forcing religion to gain members based on the "marketplace if ideas" rather than government support - exactly what Jefferson and Madison intended. The authors provide sufficient history to show how the "evangelicals" and Catholics of that day were for the most part strong secularists because they didn't have any political power, but now that these two groups currently compose a significant minority are pushing for the opposite - government power that endorses their belief system, an irony not lost on the authors.

Another fine feature is the authors did not depend on quotes by design, which are often used by ideologues on both sides to distort the true history of our founding, instead they discuss political battles and who sided with whom. Particularly interesting was President Madison vetoing "faith based charities" for his denomination of Episcopalians, the most potent political group among Christians of that time. Another great analogy was the fight to stop the movement of mail on Sunday during a time when the Postal Service was much more important to greasing the skids of the market than it is today. And still more evidence, the fight to change the Constitution's preamble so "We the People" didn't sanction and empower our government, but rather that our government derive its power from God and Jesus Christ ,with Their attributes defined by the government, much like the European theocracies that caused so much suffering through the Dark and Middle Ages.

What I would have hoped for from the authors was that they footnoted. While they do provide a great bibliography at the end and also discuss their reasons for not footnoting, I don't think one little book is going to dissuade zealots from clinging to lies, footnotes in today's world are imperative. While I absolutely trust the integrity of the authors, we have an abundance of people publishing distorted tracts that makes it imperative we require all authors to footnote (see Dobson, Robertson, and Kennedy for three examples).

I also would have preferred a more robust defense of our religious history. The authors are great writers, entertaining, engaging, and yet even-handed. At 177 pages, there was plenty of room to go into more detail regarding Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton source material; thus providing additional evidence along with their opponents for a more full-fledged portrayal that these men did in fact purposefully set out, and in fact succeeded, to create a secular government and a society where religion could blossom, or whither, based on merit rather than government power.

This book debunks the Christian Right's bogus claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation like nothing else on the market. It is scholarly yet easy to read for the general reader. It is also a logical companion volume to Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy by Frederick Clarkson, which describes the theocratic intentions of the modern Christian Right. Together these books are essential reading for anyone who wants to stop the errosion of the consitutional separation of church and state and to preserve religious freedom in the U.S.

Well organized, superbly written, and short, this book conveys both the sweeping significance of the American revolution and the threat of the Religious Right better than any other I have seen. Its effectiveness is amplified by the evidence that the authors are supportive of a role for religion in society. Any "conservative" who is tempted by parochial school voucher proposals, any "liberal" who thinks America is just like other countries, any politician of any kind, and you too should read it.

The Constitution properly protects motherhood and apple pie, but not flags and school prayers, because the Founding Fathers learned that symbols cannot be substitutes for substance. Let's keep it that way.

...Why the Religious Right is Wrong About the Separation of Church and State, by Rob Boston. That book will arm you with more weapons to fight against right-wing religious extremists, who have tried to rewrite U.S. history and mislead people about religious liberty.

This book examines American History to discover the original intent of the First Amendment. America is not, nor has it ever been an instrument for religion. It was purposely founded on secular ideals to avoid the oppression which all to often plagued governments where church and state were not separated. The American form of government is founded on ideals which were formulated in the mind of man. This position is best summarized by President John Adams who wrote: "Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses." [A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787]

Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore set out in 1996 to defend the American principle of church-state relations, which they take to mean a rather strict view of church-state separation. Tracing the principle from Roger Williams and John Locke through the founders to recent times, they argue that the Christian right misrepresents the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Certainly a corrective to some of the rhetoric of the religious right is warranted. One occasionally hears the claim that the Constitution is a "Christian document," that the founders were all devout Christians, and that America was founded as a "Christian nation."

As our authors point out, at the time of the Constitution most states had established churches and religious tests for office. The Constitution, by outlawing religious tests for federal offices and omitting references to God as a source of authority was a definite break from practice. For this reason, many opponents of the Constitution labeled it a "godless" document. And far from being uniformly orthodox, many (although certainly not all) of the founders were hostile to traditional (that is Trinitarian) Christianity.

There are two problems with this work, one methodological and the other factual. By its own terms, the First Amendment applies only to the federal government. (An attempt by Madison to make it binding on the states failed.) It wasn't until the twentieth century that the Supreme Court held that the fourteenth amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states. That being the case, it is likely that part of the goal of the Constitution was to leave religion where it existed - with the states.

That leads to my second complaint: a failure to discuss any evidence that is contrary to our authors' thesis. Their discussion of Thomas Jefferson is typical. Our authors dutifully tell us that he didn't proclaim days of prayer or thanksgiving as president. Yet they don't tell us that as governor of Virginia he proclaimed a day of prayer in 1779. Even as president, Jefferson attended church services at the House of Representatives, and signed a law providing for a missionary and a church to the Kaskaskia Indians. Nor do they tell us that in his second inaugural address he stated that:

"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies."

Since Jefferson said something similar in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, his view of church-state relations was consistent with his federalism. If there is any evidence that Jefferson would have supported federal court involvement in state matters such as prayer in school or the posting of the Ten Commandments, our authors don't seem to have it. (And the same goes for attempts to use the federal court to prevent the teaching of "secular humanism" in the public schools.)

The discussion of James Madison illustrates the problem in reverse. Madison was always running into problems with Congress over church-state issues. Congress thought that paid chaplains, religious charters and federal aid to churches were permissible under the First Amendment, much to Madison's consternation. It doesn't occur to our authors that perhaps most people at the time didn't consider the Constitution so godless after all. This makes me wonder if the authors' failure to mention the Blaine Amendment (which sought to forbid state aid to religion) was just an oversight. While our authors have a fascinating discussion of an attempt to amend the Constitution to declare America a Christian nation, that the Blaine amendment failed (after the ratification of the fourteenth amendment no less) isn't worthy of mention. One can interpret this failure in various ways, but at least some who voted for the amendment apparently believed that it was necessary to amend the Constitution to make it sufficiently "godless."

I have no complaint with authors who write popular books, but this book's failure to include footnotes or discuss responsible authors who take an opposing approach is particularly striking. While our authors take on deep thinkers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, nowhere do they interact with scholars who have challenged the separationist line, such as Robert Cord and Daniel Driesbach, or have a more sympathetic role of the influence of Christianity on the founders such as Ellis Sandoz.

Even a cursory review of history shows the benefits of the separation of church and state. Defending the principle by one-sided scholarship does no one any good.

Having had Kramnick as a professor, the only thing which could have added to my respect for his exquisite command of language and persuasion is this book