Religion and the State

The term most citizens, including their legislators, executives, and jurists, have favored for their polity is "separation of church and state," a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Connecticut Baptists in 1802. This is accepted as constitutional dogma by many, though it is not mentioned in the Constitution and in practice it has not meant the drawing of a radical line between what James Madison called "religion and civil authority." Thus the fact that religious institutions are ordinarily exempted from taxation, that legislatures pay chaplains, and the like, suggests that extreme and pure separation has never existed.

The terms in which the Constitution is interpreted by the U.S.. Supreme Court and other courts and by the public change regularly in the light of changed circumstances and changing Court personnel. Persistently, American majorities have indicated that they prefer policies friendly to religious institutions and expressions. Most of them withhold consent, however, when such policies verge too explicitly toward establishing a religion, or religion in general, when privileging one religious group over another, or privileging religion over nonreligion.

While these majorities insist that they are free to advocate for specific political outcomes on the basis of their interpretations of sacred texts such as the Bible or church dogma, most know that to be effective they cannot expect the nonreligious citizens or members of other religious groups to be swayed by their own interpretations and claims. The Enlightenment ideas have endured alongside dissenting Christian expressions to counter too aggressive religious movements.

In the Federalist Papers No. 10, James Madison, when he was trying to win support for the ratification of the Constitution, contended that the security of the republic lay in the multiplicity of interests, including religious ones. There have always been and there remain controversies over policy contention based on explicit religious claims of some versus those of others who would appeal chiefly to rational argument. However, in general, American religionists have bought into and support the liberal state.

The favor most Americans show religion and religious groups has been returned in kind throughout most of American history. During the Civil War southern religious leadership provided warrants for the ideas and military acts of the Confederate States of America while the northern clerics and lay articulators supported the ideas of the Union. At the same time, what scholars call civil religion, public religion, or the religion of the republic has tended to draw support of the members of religious organizations. While the voice of dissent has never been completely stifled, for the most part religious voices have been nationalistic, supportive of the military in the nation's wars, and confident that the American state is "a nation under God," even if there is no Constitutional base for the claim.