Our founding fathers enshrined the separation of church and state in our Constitution for good reasons. Many of them were deists, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Christians who believed that God created the universe, gave man free will, but does not intervene. Millions of people died in the Inquisitions and the Thirty Years Wars, when the Catholic Church tried to stamp out “heresy“ and Protestantism. Armies on both sides devastated civilian populations.
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]"
―James Madison
Spanish priests and conquistadors brought the Inquisition to the new world. French Huguenots fled to Florida, where they were massacred in 1565.
Catholics were not accepted in most of the colonies, in some denied political office. There were two wealthy Catholic cousins who were supporters of the Revolution, the most prominent Charles Carroll, who was sent to Europe for his education. An historian credited him with the “no religious test” clause, he became a senator from Maryland.
Anti-immigrant movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries targeted Catholics from Europe.
As I’ve covered in other essays, our current “culture war” began over civil rights in the 1960s. A small part of it has resulted in splitting mainline Protestant churches to destroy or diminish their influence. The Catholic Church is also in schism, Pope Francis and moderate/progressive Catholics on one side, U.S. bishops, other “conservative“ Catholics including Archbishop Timothy Dolan and several $billionaires on the other. There’s a link below from the National Catholic Register about Dolan.
Paul Weyrich chose federal judges for Reagan, Leonard Leo and the theocon Catholic dominated Federalist Society for GW and Trump. They don’t believe in the separation of church and state. They call themselves “originalist“, meaning interpreting the Constitution as it was written in the mindset of the Founding Fathers. In practice it means choosing which parts of the Constitution and precedent decisions to advance their theocratic agenda.
Two examples: 1) Rewriting the Second Amendment, written by James Madison for one reason, to assure slave owning states that they could keep their “well regulated militias“, necessary to guard against Indian attacks, slave revolts, the federal army they feared would take their slaves, and to recapture runaway slave; 2) Women’s rights to contraceptives and abortion, common and allowed by law in the colonies. The government shutdown in 2013 was over the ACA covering contraceptives, which reduce abortions. It cost our economy an estimated $19-$24 billion.
A majority of U.S. citizens support the separation of church and state, women’s and LGBT rights, access to contraceptives, safe necessary abortions, and the right to vote.
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