Religious liberty for all

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 509.

By the middle of the 18th century, many different kinds of Protestants lived in America. Congregationalists, as the Puritans came to be called, still dominated in Massachusetts and the neighboring colonies, an area which came to be known as New England.

Although the Church of England was an established Church in several colonies, Protestants lived side by side in relative harmony. Already they had begun to influence each other.

At the same time the works of John Locke (1632-1704) were becoming known in America. John Locke reasoned that the right to govern comes from an agreement or "social contract" voluntarily entered into by free people. The Puritan experience in forming congregations made this idea seem natural to many Americans.

It was politics and not religion that most occupied Americans' minds during the War of Independence (1775-1783) and for years afterward. A few Americans were so influenced by the new science and new ideas of the enlightenment in Europe that they became deists, believing that reason teaches that God exists but leaves man free to settle his own affairs.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States forbade the new federal government to give special favors to any religion or to hinder the free practice, or exercise, of religion. But Protestant Churches kept a privileged position in a few of the states. Not until 1833 did Massachusetts cut the last ties between Church and State.

The First Amendment insured that the American government would not meddle in religious affairs or require any religious beliefs of its citizens. But did it mean that the American government would have nothing at all to do with religion? Or did it mean that the government would be religiously neutral, treating all religions alike?

In some ways, the government supports all religions. Religious groups do not pay taxes in the United States. The armed forces pay chaplains of all faiths. Presidents and other political leaders often call on God to bless the American nation and people. Those whose religion forbids them to fight can perform other services instead of becoming soldiers.

But government does not pay ministers' salaries or require any belief—not even a belief in God—as a condition of holding public office. Oaths are administered, but those who, like Quakers, object to them, can make a solemn affirmation, or declaration, instead.

The truth is that for some purposes government ignores religion and for other purposes it treats all religions alike—at least as far as is practical. When disputes about the relationship between government and religion arise, American courts must settle them.

American courts have become more sensitive in recent years to the rights of people who do not believe in any God or religion. But in many ways what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in 1952 is still true. "We are a religious people," he declared, "whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."

In the early years of the American nation, Americans were confident that God supported their experiment in democracy. They had just defeated Great Britain—probably the most powerful nation in the world at that time. Protestant religion and republican forms of government, they felt, went hand in hand. America had a divine mission to make her unique combination of political freedom and "Yankee" thrift and ingenuity a model for the world to follow.