Against separation

It should thus come as no surprise that the dissenters did not demand "separation of church and state," and that this phrase does not appear in the Constitution. Nor is it plausible that (as is sometimes suggested as a fallback position) separation is an understated but underlying principle of the First Amendment. Separation was simply not what religious dissenters or their advocates wanted.

Nativist prejudice

How, then did separation come to be considered a constitutional principle? The phrase "separation of church and state" became popular as part of American constitutional law largely through the effect of fear and animosity that can justly be considered prejudice. Though often praised as the desire of eighteenth-century minorities, separation has, in fact, a later and very different genealogy. It entered American constitutional law through the importunate demands of various nineteenth- and twentieth-century majorities, which embraced separation in response to their anxieties about ecclesiastical authority, especially that which they associated with the Catholic church.

Of course, just because separation was used by prejudiced groups in the past does not mean its current supporters--or even all of its past advocates--have been prejudiced. Nonetheless, the early history of separation is revealing and should not be minimized. Some advocates of separation may attempt to discount the bigotry or downplay the importance of the more prejudiced supporters of separation in establishing this idea in American constitutional law. Yet while the good faith of the current advocates of separation should not be questioned, the obvious prejudice of many of their predecessors begs attention. In particular, this prejudice needs to be recognized and examined for what it reveals about separation.

The phrase "separation between church and state" first entered popular American political debates during the election of 1800 and its aftermath. As previously noted, the phrase is ordinarily attributed to Jefferson, but he was following a path already laid out by his fellow Republicans. Federalist clergymen had preached that Jefferson was an infidel and therefore unworthy to be president, and Republican propagandists responded by arguing that clergymen should keep religion and politics separate. Blending both anti-establishment and anticlerical sentiments, these Republicans used a version of the idea of separation to condemn Federalist ministers for speaking about politics. Jefferson himself feared the New England Federalist clergy, their establishments, and above all, their claims of ecclesiastical authority. In 1802, after becoming president, he answered a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association by echoing the electioneering rhetoric: "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." Although today venerated as a statement of religious liberty, Jefferson's letter was also a profoundly anticlerical, political condemnation of the New England clergy for exercising their First Amendment rights of speech and press. The implications of the phrase "separation of church and state" were not lost on Jefferson's contemporaries, and the words did not become popular outside of some Republican and, later, Jacksonian political circles.