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Religious Intolerance and America
By Larry Spalding, Legislative Staff Counsel
November 1996
Americans are a religious people. More than eightyfive percent of us identify ourselves as members of some organized religion. Fifty percent of us regularly attend religious services one or more times each month.
Christianity is the majority religion and was the predominant faith of the framers of the Constitution. Indeed, it has been said that "America is a Christian nation."
Those who advance this premise, however, mean to imply something other than that there are more Christians than nonChristians within our national borders. They believe that the Constitution and our democratic form of government have been blessed by God. Consequently, they interpret the religion clauses of the First Amendment to mean that while the state may not become involved with the church, the influence of religion, specifically Christianity, should not be removed from the body politic.
They would also argue that the Constitution does not necessarily guarantee that nonChristians are to receive the same treatment before the law as Christians.
There is some historical precedent for this view. Although thousands of early European settlers came to these shores in search of religious freedom, much of our national history portrays a lack of religious tolerance.
There was no religious tolerance for the native people of the Americas. In the South, Spaniards gave the conquered tribes the option of converting to Christianity or being killed. In the North, the official government policy of the United States was to deny Native Americans placed on reservations the right to maintain their culture or to practice their own religion. Only Christian missionaries were permitted to provide religious instruction.
Catholic immigrants were not welcome in many parts of our country. AntiSemitism has long been one of the uglier aspects of our history. Mormons were denied, with the approval of the Supreme Court, the right to vote and to sit on juries. Members of other minority religions have faced discrimination both from the government and the general populace.
John Locke, despite being an early pioneer of religious toleration, "insisted that toleration should not be extended to nonbelievers on the ground that, since they do not fear divine retribution for their transgressions, they cannot be expected to abide by promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society." Locke clearly implied that nonbelievers should not have the same civil rights as Christians.
Such reasoning underlaid the original rules of evidence concluding that nonbelievers were incapable of bearing witness or acting as jurors. Under the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, no witness could testify who "did not believe that there is a God who rewards truth and avenges falsehood." The federal rule was changed in 1906 to follow the law of the applicable state concerning the competency of a witness to testify.
Most states, including Florida, now permit witnesses to swear or "affirm" that their testimony will be the truth. Interestingly, six states continue to exclude nonbelievers as competent to testify. Four of these states (Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas), by statute or state constitutional provision, additionally prohibit nonbelievers from holding public office. While I am confident each of these provisions, if enforced and challenged, would be declared violative of the federal constitution, the fact remains that these laws are on the books today.
Fortunately, history does have its dissenters from this narrow view of religious liberty. Some of them were quite prominent in the formation and development of our country.
Thomas Paine is known to most Americans as the author of Common Sense, a call for the colonies to rebel against England. He also wrote The Age of Reason, which was a powerful attack on the intolerance of Christianity as practiced during his day.
Thomas Jefferson is known for his role in writing the Declaration of Independence and as President of the United States. It is less well known that Jefferson was a deist who openly rejected Christianity and nearly lost the election of 1800 because of opposition of Christians who denounced him as a champion of "atheism and immorality."
Albert Einstein wrote "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Nonetheless, for most Americans, "faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life." Our Constitution protects the right to hold that belief. Religious liberty, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is a fundamental freedom.
"Freedom of religion," however, is not about the predominance of one faith over another. Nor is it about one faith placing the imprimatur of its values on the laws which govern the people. Rather, it is about tolerance, understanding and respect. It is about the ability of the church and the state each to function independently in its own sphere free from the control of the other.
The calls by religious political extremists to commingle religion and government are not new, but history has shown that they are a false clarion. As James Madison expressed in 1822, "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." The wisdom of separating church and state remains as valid for the 21st century as it was for the 19th.
