Blog from the Capital

At Dispatches From the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton dissects the foolish recent statements of Jerry Falwell. Brayton is exactly right. And how many times will we have to keep shooting down the same tired, offensive, illogical rhetoric? As many times as it takes, I suppose. His retort could stand as a response to any number of inaccurate, misleading statements on the part of those who would disintegrate the separation of church and state. At the end of the day, they have these 2 tricks: claiming that church-state separationists "want to purge Christianity from the public square"; and maintaining that those of us who oppose religious expression by the government are somehow anti-religion. Brayton dismisses them in turn--the first:

This is a flat out lie - no one is in favor of prohibiting "public religious expression" and no one claims that Jefferson advocated such an idea.
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People can and do engage in public religious expression every minute of every day in this country, including on government property. I have personally attended an "America for Jesus" rally at which Falwell himself spoke held in a public park, on government property. No one tried to stop him from doing so; the permit for the rally was issued without regard to the religious nature of the expression. And similar events take place every day in parks and on courthouse grounds and public property all over the country.

And the second:

Think about the argument that Falwell is making here. He's saying that because Jefferson and Madison believed in God they must not have supported separation of church and state. Yet if Jefferson were alive today and condemning President Bush for issuing a thanksgiving proclamation that he believed was outside the authority of government to make, what would Falwell say? Mr. Jefferson would suddenly become a liberal separationist out to "drive religion from the public square."

And of course the truth is that there are many religious people and organizations - like the Baptist Joint Committee - that are committed to church-state separation because it's good for religion not to rely on the government to do its work and not to allow government to pick and choose which religions receive support and which do not. Your religion might be picked today but it might be disfavored tomorrow.

It is up to people of faith to make this argument over and over - that supporting the constitutional separation of church and state does not make us anti-religious. Just the opposite. Both our faith and our laws can steer toward the same common-sense destination: government should stay out of the business of religion--shouldn't impede it, shouldn't promote it.