A Necessary Separation: Church and State in America
Two distinct ideologies centered on the role of religion in the state have been identified in American history by Frank Lambert (2003): the "Planning Fathers" who initially settled the New World in the New England and Atlantic colonies sought to create a haven for their own religious beliefs, while the "Founding Fathers" who wrote first the Declaration of Independence and later the U.S. Constitution and its first set of Amendments sought to ensure religious freedom by "separating" Church from State and ensuring that neither entity could dictate to the other. Noting that the overwhelming majority of the early "planners" and "founders" were members of Protestant Christian sects, Robert Boston (1993) also pointed out that none of the "founders" were of the opinion that the new nation would benefit from an overly close integration of religion and politics.
In this essay, it will be argued that the separation of Church and State affirmed in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment remains vital today û particularly in light of the fact that the United States is more and more readily identifiable as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious society that should not be in any sense dominated by any religious group or belief system. Congress and the Court should act, at all times, to preserve religious independence and freedom of worship. This should include rejecting any and all attempts to create or to identify any "state religion" or set of religious beliefs and values that could exert a normative influence over society and the behavior of individuals. As Robert Boston (1993) has so aptly demonstrated, any democratic society that refuses to recognize the right of individuals and groups to worship as they see fit û and not as a group, however large, wants them to worship û cannot be called democratic. One should recognize in this particular era in which rel...