David Barton

Noah Webster provides additional corroboration of the Founders’ views on this subject. Webster today is primarily known only as an educator (his impact on education was so profound that he has been titled the “Schoolmaster to America”), yet he was also a Founding Father, serving as a soldier during the Revolution and a legislator and judge afterwards. He was one of the first Founders to call for the Constitutional Convention and was personally responsible for specific wording in the Constitution. In a textbook he authored for public schools, Webster told students: All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

Very simply, the Founders understood the numerous societal benefits produced by Biblical precepts and values and had no intention of expunging those principles from the public square. They even believed that American government would not function properly if separated from religious principles. As John Adams explained: [W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (emphasis added)

Adams was one of only two Founders to sign the Bill of Rights (and thus the First Amendment), and as a constitutional expert, he forcefully pronounced that our Constitution would not function properly if separated from religious values and standards. Yet, contemporary courts now use the document that bears his signature to prohibit what he encouraged under that same document. Significantly, subsequent generations retained the Framers’ beliefs about the importance of Biblical principles in maintaining a civilized society. For example, Robert Winthrop, a Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives in the 1840s, repeated what he had learned from the Framers, explaining: Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or by the bayonet. (There are similar authoritative declarations from numerous other Framers and early statesmen.)

Given the Founders’ unequivocal position on the necessity of including religious principles and expressions throughout the public arena, is it reasonable to believe that they would create an Amendment whose alleged purpose was to prohibit what they so cherished and advocated? Certainly not! To the contrary, not only did the Founders never intend that the First Amendment be a vehicle to separate religious principles from public affairs but they believed that through its Free Exercise clause they had protected these principles and kept them in the public square.

One of the clearest affirmations of the Framer’s commitment to retaining religious principles in official arenas came from President George Washington, who presided over the formation of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In his famous “Farewell Address,” † Washington reminded Americans that religious teachings and values must never be removed from politics and public policy, declaring:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable [insepa-rable] supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness – these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. (emphasis added) Notice that Washington even asserted that if anyone tried to separate religion and morality from public life and policy, he could not be called a patriot! Washington was not finished, however; he next warned Americans to reject the proposition that morality could be preserved apart from religion:

[L]et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Washington, understanding that religion was the basis of morality and that there was no secure basis for a free government apart from religion, therefore insightfully queried:

Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

Washington warned that if religious principles were separated from public institutions such as our courts of justice, then citizens would no longer have a secure basis for property, life, or freedom. Clearly, the writings not only of George Washington but also of John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Fisher Ames, John Marshall, Noah Webster, James Madison, and many other prominent Founders make clear that they did not embrace the secular “separation” philosophy imposed on America today, and supposedly imposed under the authority of the Constitution they wrote.

Yet, if the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in no official founding document, then what is the source of that phrase? And how did it become so closely associated with the First Amendment?

On October 7, 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that protection for religion had been written into the laws and constitutions. Believing strongly that freedom of religion was an inalienable right given by God, the fact that it appeared in civil documents suggested that the government viewed it as a government-granted rather than a God-granted right. Apprehensive that the government might someday wrongly believe that it did have the power to regulate public religious activities, the Danbury Baptists communicated their anxiety to President Jefferson. On January 1, 1802, Jefferson responded to their letter. He understood their concerns and agreed with them that man accounted only to God and not to government for his faith and religious practice. Jefferson emphasized to the Danbury Baptists that none of man’s natural (i.e., inalienable) rights – including the right to exercise one’s faith publicly – would ever place him in a situation where the government would interfere with his religious expressions. He assured them that because of the wall of separation, they need not fear government interference with religious expressions: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, . . . 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 and State.

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