The Separation of Church and State Is Beneficial to Religion

John M. Swomley

John M. Swomley, a member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of Religion, the State, and the Schools, argues that disestablishment—the separation of government and religion—has actually been good for both church and state. Realizing that many religious people have disagreed with court decisions, he offers eight reasons why churches should favor a stronger separation of church and state, including the fact that churches are stronger when they finance their own programs and are more successful in third world nations if they they are not specifically tied to Western governments.

Primary Source Text

The religious liberty of all necessarily requires that no church, synagogue, denomination, or combination of religious organizations have the power to direct the government, its policies, or actions other than through the process of persuading public opinion on the issues or principles they advocate.

Source

John M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and the Secular State. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987. Copyright © 1987 by John M. Swomley. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

It is also essential that the government not institute its own religious activity either as a supplement or as an alternative to the religious expression of individuals or churches and synagogues. If government officials believe private religious expression is not adequate, or that the general public needs to be exposed to state-sponsored prayer services or religious gatherings under public auspices such as in public schools or in connection with public sports events, such state activity would violate religious liberty. The mere fact of prayer authorized by law is a civil matter and therefore a secular rather than religious expression.

The use by the state (and even by secular business corporations) of religious services and symbols secularizes and profanes them. The Bank of the Holy Spirit in Lisbon, Portugal, does not differ from other banks in interest rates charged to the poor or in its employment practices. When the government takes over a religious holiday or sponsors religious displays, it endorses the appearance of religiosity without the ethical and theological substance of the religion it endorses. In this way, because government is not a community of faith, it waters down and secularizes the otherwise sacred symbols. Government sponsorship of religious services, holy days, and religious symbols is thus an additional enemy of religious liberty and of religion itself.

In democracies or republics such as the United States, government rarely engages in such violations of religious liberty because it intends to secularize or to damage religion. It does so at the request of or as the result of pressure from organized religious groups. There are religious groups that believe that the state should not be an impartial administrator of justice or promoter of the general welfare but an agency to promote the true religion, which they believe is not only Christianity, but their particular expression of Christianity. Such groups retain legal and public relations staff for the purpose of gaining government aid or government expression of their position. Although such efforts over a period of decades are often counterproductive, religious bodies have a right to engage in such activity and to hold such beliefs, as do those who oppose their sectarian proposals or who oppose all religion.

Religious liberty cannot be founded on restriction of groups seeking dominance for their doctrines or organization, or on restriction of opponents of organized religion. Such restriction is the negation of liberty. The secular state, however, is constitutionally restricted and forbidden to legislate or otherwise involve itself in religious matters. That is the genius of the American doctrine of separation of church and state and of a secular constitution. Theocratic government, or something short of it in the way of government support or endorsement of religious doctrine or institutions, is a denial of religious liberty. Only when the state is secular can it be impartial and therefore guarantee equally the liberty of all religious organizations.

Some religious groups are critical of the idea of a secular state because they believe anything secular is an enemy of religion. This assumes that complete neutrality with respect to religion is hostility. This is not the American experience; religious influence in American society and church membership has grown substantially since the adoption of a secular constitution in 1787.

Why Separation of Church and State Is Good for Religion

The following reasons summarize why churches should favor separation of church and state, which is the essence of a secular state:

1. Separation prevents the government from determining church policy, whether directly or indirectly.
2. Separation does not permit churches to seek special privileges from government that are denied to minority religious groups and to nonreligious citizens.
3. Churches are healthier and stronger if they assume responsibility both for financing their own programs and for stimulating their members to accept that responsibility.
4. By operating independently of government aid, the churches deny to government the imposition of compulsory tithes on all taxpayers, believers and nonbelievers alike. The churches thus avoid the resentment of those who do not want to be forced to contribute to churches to which they do not belong and of their own members who do not welcome being forced to contribute through government taxation.
5. Since separation precludes financial support or special privilege from government, the churches are free to engage in prophetic criticism of the government and to work for social justice.
6. The mission of the churches is compromised by government aid to church schools and colleges that serve chiefly middle- and upper-class students or by government subsidy of church-sponsored homes for senior citizens of the same general economic status. Church empires are costly and require additional private funds from those who use the services, thus tending to exclude millions of poor people.
7. Government sponsorship of religious activity, including prayer services, sacred symbols, religious festivals, and the like, tends to secularize the religious activity rather than make government more ethical or religious. Prayer at the dedication of a missile silo does not make the weapon less deadly; nor does prayer in the classroom increase respect for poor teaching or inspire good discipline.
8. The churches' witness in other nations is greater if they are not identified with Western culture or with one or more specific governments. The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa is identified with the white government and its apartheid policy. Judaism is identified with Israel and its Palestinian policy. The Roman Catholic church was the alter ego of the [Francisco] Franco dictatorship in fascist Spain and the [Antonio de Oliviera] Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. It is the official church in Ireland and identified with the Irish Republican Army in its war to absorb northern Ireland.