Church and State, Separation of. The separation of church and state in the United States is a constantly evolving ideal that emerged out of struggles for disestablishment of established churches in the new states during the era of the
Revolutionary War. The concept reflected the thought of the eighteenth‐century Enlightenment, which in turn was influenced by the Protestant Reformation. Americans like Thomas
Jefferson and James
Madison considered religious influence in politics to be divisive and potentially repressive.
Not an end in itself, separation of church and state is a means of protecting religious liberty, securing the freedom of individuals in their choice, practice, and support of religious affiliation or nonaffiliation. The ideal has reflected the religious diversity of the American people and has adapted itself to vast changes in American society.
Separation was originally mandated by the religious‐freedom provisions of the early state constitutions and in the First Amendment, which declares: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Scant evidence exists regarding the framers’ intentions. At a minimum they clearly meant to preclude the federal government from interfering in religious matters, but equally clearly they did not intend to disestablish state churches or authorize the federal government to do so. This, however, is the narrowest possible reading of the framers’ intent—a reading that perforce ignores two centuries of national experience.
Nineteenth‐century struggles over religious policy merely identified problems of separation, rather than providing solutions for them. Litigation over schisms in the Congregational churches, prosecutions for blasphemy and Sabbath‐breaking, persecution of Mormons for polygamy, efforts of Catholic prelates to obtain public funds for religious education, the
Kulturkampf waged by mainline Protestant clergy to “Americanize” the new Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Christian Orthodox immigrants from eastern and southern Europe all fueled religious controversy without clarifying any definitive meaning of the separation of church and state principle.
In the twentieth century, the federal judiciary, particularly the U.S.
Supreme Court, assumed responsibility for defining and enforcing separation. In
Cantwell v.
Connecticut (1940), the Court interpreted the religion clause of the First Amendment as a restriction on state power. Thenceforth, the content of separation became largely a matter of judicial debate.
The “free exercise” principle developed without much controversy at first. Numerous cases in the 1940s involving
Jehovah's Witnesses, most notably the second case involving Witnesses’ refusal to salute the American flag,
West Virginia Board of Education v.
Barnette (1943), imposed severe constraints on the states’ abilities to dictate or prohibit religious observance. But in
Employment Division v.
Smith (1990), a case involving the sacramental use of peyote by members of the
Native American Church, the Court determined that states could enforce laws of general applicability no matter how drastically such laws inhibited an individual's religious practice. Recognizing that the
Smith principle could lead to discrimination and impermissible state interference with religious practices, especially those of minority groups, Congress in 1993 passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, repudiating
Smith’s permissive approach to state authority. The Court responded to this unusual initiative by holding the statute unconstitutional as an intrusion on its powers of judicial review (
Boerne v.
Flores [1997]).
Issues involving the “establishment” clause generally proved more controversial, however, evoking efforts for constitutional amendments to overturn Supreme Court rulings. Questions of state aid to parochial schools and released time for religious education ignited the controversy. In
Everson v.
Board of Education (1947), Justice Hugo
Black adopted a strict interpretation of separation and imposed Jefferson's metaphor of “a wall of separation” as a canonical reading of the First Amendment. Establishment controversies nevertheless continued, involving school prayer (
Engel v. Vitale [1962],
Abington School District v.
Schempp [1963]), federal and state financial subventions for religious schools; and, finally, the constitutional flashpoint, cases involving the display of religious symbols such as crèches and menorahs on government property. In
Lemon v.
Kurtzman (1971), the Supreme Court tried unsuccessfully to resolve establishment‐clause controversies by adopting the so‐called three‐part
Lemon test, requiring a secular legislative purpose for government involvement in religious matters, forbidding governmental promotion or inhibition of religion, and barring excessive government entanglement with religion.
Chief Justices Warren Burger and William H. Rehnquist articulated the principal alternative to the Black‐Jefferson view of strict separation, calling for a policy of “accommodation” of religious practice and rejecting impartial neutrality between religion and secularism (
Lynch v.
Donnelly, 1984). As the twentieth century ended, strict separation and accommodation vied for dominance in public debate. As religious practice became both more pervasive and more diverse in American society, issues of separation of church and state seemed likely to continue to roil understandings of the First Amendment.
See also
Bill of Rights;
Federalism;
Islam;
Judaism;
Mormonism;
Protestantism;
Religion;
Roman Catholicism.
Bibliography
Paul G. Kauper , Religion and the Constitution, 1964.
Mark De Wolfe Howe , The Garden and the Wilderness: Religion and Government in American Constitutional History, 1965.
Sydney E. Ahlstrom , A Religious History of the American People, 1972.
Laurence H. Tribe , American Constitutional Law, 2d ed., 1988, pp. 1154–301.
Leonard W. Levy , The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment, 1994.
Stephen M. Feldman , Please Don't Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State, 1997.
William M. Wiecek
