Sunday, September 27, 1998

Jefferson's 'wall of separation' intact

By ROBYN BLUMNER

St. Petersburg Times

The Library of Congress, regarded as a fastidiously temperate institution, has fired a volley on the wrong side of America's culture war.

In a traveling exhibition on the influence of religion in the founding of this nation, Dr. James Hutson, chief of the library's manuscript division, has questioned Thomas Jefferson's motivation in writing of "a wall of separation between Church and State." Despite reams of historical evidence to the contrary, Hutson suggests Jefferson may not have meant what he said.

Typically, a scholarly inquiry into the turning of a phrase 196 years ago would not engender much interest outside the narrow realm of academe. But Jefferson's "wall of separation" has been cited in at least 50 U.S. Supreme Court cases. There is no phrase in our history as politically combustible today. Those words have been used by the court to justify removing organized prayer from public schools, prohibiting the use of tax dollars to support parochial schools and stripping courtrooms and other public buildings of religious messages such as the Ten Commandments.

If the Library of Congress can shed some additional light on Jefferson's immortal phrase, then it should present that information to the public.

Convoluted 'press primer'

But what Hutson has offered is a jarringly convoluted nine-page, unfootnoted, un-peer-reviewed, "press primer" titled "The Wall of Separation Between Church and State: What Jefferson Originally Wrote and What It Means."

By a curious deciphering of some crossed-out words in the original letter, Hutson conjectures the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a committee of Danbury Baptists on Jan. 1, 1802, in which he said the First Amendment builds a wall between church and state, was meant as a "political manifesto" and not a "tool of constitutional interpretation." Hutson then suggests the Supreme Court misread Jefferson's intent when it used the phrase as a shorthand explication of the Constitution's religion clauses. By 1802, argues Hutson, Jefferson seems to have come around to the belief that government "could provide 'friendly aids' to churches."

Could the Christian right have asked for anything more?

On June 2, the day after Hutson's press primer was released, the Christian Coalition trumpeted the news in a press release titled: "Library of Congress Skewers 'Wall of Separation' Myth."

For good of both

But Hutson could not be more wrong about Jefferson. He may not have specifically intended his "wall" metaphor to guide the Supreme Court, but he would have been proud to know it served that function. Throughout his life, Jefferson's abiding philosophy was that religious and civic duties should be separated -- for the good of both.

In fact, the letter to the Danbury Baptists was an answer to why he refused to follow the lead of the first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, and call for national days of "fasts and thanksgivings." According to Issac Kramnick, professor of government at Cornell University and an expert on the founding fathers, Jefferson declined to do so because that would mean a civic officer was deciding matters of religious faith. "He saw it as blurring the line between church and state. Fast days were too clearly religious in overtone," said Kramnick.

As a delegate to the Virginia assembly, Jefferson wrote the Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia, which, when passed in 1786, was the most sweeping legislative statement in the country for the separation of church and state. It included the phrase "no man shall be compelled to support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever." The achievement was so significant that Jefferson asked his authorship of it be mentioned on his tombstone.

And despite Hutson's assertion that by 1802 Jefferson had become willing to provide "friendly aid" to religion, Kramnick points out Jefferson continued to stick to a separationist view after his presidency ended. In 1817, he offered a plan for public elementary schools in Virginia that excluded clergy as school trustees. He also suggested no religious instruction be offered if it was against the beliefs of any denomination. His ideas were rejected. However, in the 1820s, he was successful in establishing the nation's first fully secular university, the University of Virginia.

Danger to freedom

Jefferson was certainly a man of rationalism and the Enlightenment, but he was not antagonistic to religion. Despite his critics' cries of atheism, he held a firm belief in God. At the same time, Jefferson saw a danger to man's freedom when the power of the crown and ecclesiastic authorities are commingled. Jefferson would probably rejoice that his jottings to the Danbury Baptists contributed to the secular nature of today's public schools and the modern prohibitions against tax money flowing to any religious institutions. He would know these policies were the ultimate manifestations of the freedom of conscience he sought for the people of his time.

After the Library of Congress was burned by the British in the War of 1812, Jefferson's personal collection of 6,707 volumes formed the core for rebuilding the library's holdings. It's time for the library to return the favor, by leaving the conceptual wall he built intact.

Robyn Blumner is a columnist and editorial writer for the St. Petersburg Times. She can be reached on internet at blumner@sptimes.com.

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