A growing popular disregard for the separation of church and state, a circumstance abetted by the current Supreme Court’s contempt for the First Amendment, is taking a toll around the nation. This is true not merely in places like Iowa or Louisiana or Texas, where Republican supermajorities eagerly dole out taxpayer money for religious education or require the posting of the Ten Commandments in schoolrooms, but even in blue states like Massachusetts.
In Quincy, a suburb of Boston, the mayor decided to allocate approximately $850,000 of taxpayer money to commission statues of two Catholic saints, St. Michael and St. Florian, to adorn the town’s new public safety building. The mayor, Thomas Koch, argued that the statues “reach beyond any religious tradition and have long been embraced by first responders around the world as symbols of courage and protection.”
Not everyone in Quincy, once a stronghold of Irish and Italian Catholics, agrees. “I’m Catholic, but I believe in a government that represents everyone,” a candidate for city council, Dave Jacobs, wrote on his campaign website.
The First Amendment, America’s best idea, is under attack as never before. The Supreme Court’s Espinoza and Makin decisions have paved the way for the use of taxpayer funds for religious and sectarian education, once a bright line demarcating the separation of church and state.
The Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton ruling allowed public prayers on public school athletic fields. Donald Trump wants to jettison the so-called Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates.
All of these moves are applauded by Christian nationalists, those who assert, contrary to historical evidence, that the United States is and always has been a Christian nation.
What the Christian nationalists fail to recognize, however, is that the First Amendment and the separation of church and state is the best friend religion has ever had. When Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, his brief for free-market capitalism, he used religion as an example. If the state stayed out of the religion business, Smith theorized, religion would flourish.
American history has amply vindicated that prediction. Religion has flourished in the United States as nowhere else precisely because the First Amendment set up a free marketplace for religion. Religious entrepreneurs, to extend the economic metaphor, are always competing with one another for popular followings, and competition in the marketplace has ensured a vibrant, salubrious religious culture.
Evangelicals, with their ability to speak the idiom of the culture, have always thrived in that marketplace—which makes their eagerness to undermine the First Amendment all the more confounding.
But there is something larger at stake in these attempts to eviscerate the First Amendment and blur the line of separation between church and state, something that the judge in the Quincy case identified. After the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to block the purchase of the saintly statues, Judge William Sullivan issued an injunction against the transaction, allowing that the mayor and the council might not have recognized why some citizens found the statues offensive.
“It is not surprising that individuals of a majority view may not appreciate the feelings of concern or alienation held by those in the minority,” he wrote.
That statement strikes at the heart of the matter. The founders were clear that they wanted to protect the rights of minorities, even though we Americans have been far too slow to live into that ideal, especially with regard to women and people of color.
The founders rejected the notion that the United States would be a majoritarian society, the idea that the majority would impose their views on everyone else. Say, for example, that a majority of Americans suddenly became vegetarians — or Masons or Christadelphians. The nation’s charter documents stipulate that even if a majority held those convictions, they had no right to demand that all Americans become vegetarians or Masons or Christadelphians.
The First Amendment, with its rejection of a religious establishment and guarantee of free exercise, was one of the safeguards against majoritarianism. Just because a majority of the citizens of Quincy, or a majority of the city council, identify as Christian doesn’t mean they have the right to enshrine their convictions in public places, much less demand that taxpayers fund such displays.
“It is not surprising that individuals of a majority view may not appreciate the feelings of concern or alienation held by those in the minority,” the judge wrote. The First Amendment provides a safeguard against such lapses.
Randall Balmer teaches American religious history at Dartmouth College. His latest book is “America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.”