Separation of Church & State

CNN’s chief legal analyst, Laura Coates, claims that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “blurred the line between politics and religion by comparing the news media to opponents of Jesus.” She then tapped her finger on a piece a paper while declaring, “‘Respecting separation of church and state.’ Yup, there it is.”

IN FACT, Coates’ doctrine of “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution but in the Soviet Constitution, and assertions that the First Amendment requires this are specious and hypocritical. Here are the specifics:

Exactly 250 years ago in 1776, the American colonies adopted a Declaration of Independence, which affirms that “all men” are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” such as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” and the purpose of government is to “secure these rights.”
Those tenets became the foundational principles of the U.S. government, and as the Supreme Court ruled in 1897, “it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.”
In 1791, the same year that the last state ratified the Constitution, the U.S. added to it a Bill of Rights in order to “prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers.”
The first of these amendments states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
In 1801, members of the Danbury Baptist Association sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson complaining that the State of Connecticut was infringing upon their religious liberties by treating them “as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights.”
Jefferson — who was also the primary author of the Declaration of Independence — replied to the Baptists and agreed with them that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God,” the “legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions,” and the First Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church & State.”
Proving that Jefferson wasn’t talking about banning God from government, he declared in his second inaugural address, “I shall need” the “favor of that being in whose hands we are,” “who led our fathers, as Israel of old,” and “I ask you” to pray “with me” that he will “enlighten” our “minds,” “guide” our “councils,” and “prosper” our “measures.”
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “freedom of religion” doesn’t prohibit Congress from enacting a law against polygamy and noted that Jefferson’s letter about a “separation between church and State” forbids Congress from legislating “opinion” but not “actions.”
In 1936, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — a regime that repressed freedom of religion and all other rights — adopted a Constitution that requires “the church” to be “separated from the state, and the school from the church.”
Elaborating on that doctrine, a Soviet leader stated, “There is neither soil nor sap on which religion can feed in the U.S.S.R.” because “the Church is separated from the state — and the schools are in the hands of the state.”
In 1937 — after Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened to stack the Supreme Court with 6 new justices — the Supreme Court began routinely flouting Jefferson’s writings about Congress not having “unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare” but only “those specifically enumerated” in the Constitution, like coining money, issuing patents, and regulating commerce with foreign nations.
In 1947, FDR’s appointees to the Supreme Court invoked Jefferson’s words about a “wall of separation between church and State” and declared that the “wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
The author of that opinion, Justice Hugo Black, also authored the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States that allowed FDR to place U.S. citizens of Japanese descent into detention camps without any evidence of “individual disloyalty” to the U.S.
In 1948, Black and six more of FDR’s appointees to the Supreme Court cited Jefferson’s phrase about a “wall of separation between church and State” to rule that public schools cannot offer voluntary religious instruction for different faiths during school hours.
In 2022, Republican appointees to the Supreme Court ruled that public schools cannot fire teachers for praying on a football field after a game because the First Amendment protects them “from government reprisal” for their religious beliefs, and the “Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

The last of these rulings accords with the Declaration of Independence, the text of the First Amendment, and Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, while Coates’ assertion is at odds with all of them.

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