Excerpts from
"Foundations
for Faith and Freedom"
Chapter 2 in
A Christian
Manifesto
by
Francis A. Schaeffer
(Crossway Books, 1981)
Here Francis Schaeffer, the beloved
Christian author and founder of L'Abri in Switzerland, explains the real
meaning and intention of the First Amendment. The American founders
never intended to limit Christian expressions! Their goal was to protect
Christianity from any government interference. Many had come to America
in search of freedom from state restraints. See
The Pilgrims, the Bible,
Persecution and Thanksgiving
"Most people do not
realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even
before the Revolutionary War ended. Also we find that prior to the
founding of the national congress all the early provincial
congresses in all thirteen colonies always opened with prayer.
And from the very beginning, prayer opened the national congress.
... They knew they were building on the Supreme Being who was
the Creator, the final reality. And they knew that without that
foundation everything in the Declaration of Independence and all
that followed would be sheer unadulterated nonsense....
"As soon as the war was over they called the first Thanksgiving Day.
Do you realize that the first Thanksgiving Day in this country was
called immediately by the Congress at the end of the war?
Witherspoon’s sermon on that day shows their perspective:
“A
republic once equally poised must either preserve its virtue
or lose its liberty.”
Earlier in a speech
Witherspoon had stressed: “He is the best friend of American liberty
who is most sincere and active in promoting pure and undefiled
religion....” (page 33)
This concept was the same
as William Penn (1644-1718) had expressed earlier:
“If
we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants.”
This consensus was as
natural as breathing in the United States at that time. We must not
forget that many of those who came to America from Europe came for
religious purposes. As they arrived, most of them established their
own individual civil governments based upon the Bible. It is, therefore,
totally foreign to the basic nature of
America at the time of the writing of the Constitution to argue a
separation doctrine that implies a secular state.
When the First
Amendment was passed it only had two purposes...
[1] ...there would be
no
established, national church for the united thirteen states. To say
it another way: There would be no “Church of the United States.” James Madison ... said that the First Amendment to the Constitution
was prompted because “the people feared one sect might obtain a
preeminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to
which they would compel others to conform.” (34)
Nevertheless, a number of
the individual states had state churches, and even that was not
considered in conflict with the First Amendment. “At the outbreak of
the American Revolution, nine of the thirteen colonies had conferred
special benefits upon one church to the exclusion of others.” “In
all but one of the thirteen states, the states taxed the people to
support the preaching of the gospel and to build churches.”
[2] The second purpose of
the First Amendment was the very opposite from what is being made of
it today. It states expressly that government should not impede or
interfere with the free practice of religion.
As Justice Douglas wrote
for the majority of the Supreme Court in the United States v.
Ballard case in 1944:
"The First Amendment
has a dual aspect. It not only 'forestalls compulsion by law of
the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of
worship' but also 'safeguards the free exercise of the chosen
form of religion.'” (35)
Today "the separation of
church and state" in America is used to silence the church. When
Christians speak out on issues, the hue and cry from the humanist
state and media is that Christians, and all religions, are
prohibited from speaking since there is a separation of church and
state. The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from
the original intent. ...
The consequence of the
acceptance of this [distorted new] doctrine leads to the removal of
religion as an influence in civil government. This fact is well
illustrated by John W. Whitehead in his book The Second American
Revolution. It is used today as a false political dictum in
order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas. As Franky
Schaeffer says in the Plan for Action:
It
has been convenient and expedient for the secular humanist,
the materialist, the so-called liberal, the feminist, the
genetic engineer, the bureaucrat, the Supreme Court Justice, to
use this arbitrary division between church and state as a
ready excuse.... It is used... to subdue the opinions of that
vast body of citizens who represent those with religious
convictions." (36)
Ponser
the following quotes by Thomas Jefferson,* the main
author of the Declaration of Independence. The third
president of the United States affirms the First
Amendment decreee that the government has no power to
control or quench the free expression of religion or
conscience:
"Believing that
religion is a
matter which lies solely between man and his God, that
he owes account to none other for his faith or his
worship,
that the legislative powers of government reach actions
only, and not opinions, 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." (This 1802 letter
to the Danbury Baptists shows a separation designed to
protect religion from government control, not silence
religious expressions.)
"Religion is a
subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously
reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every
man and his Maker in which
no other, and
far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."
(letter to Robert Rush, 1813)
"I consider the
government of the United States as interdicted by the
Constitution
from intermeddling in religious institutions,
their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results
not only from the provision that no law shall be made
respecting the establishment or free exercise of
religion, but from that also which reserves to the
states the powers not delegated to the United States.
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise
or to assume authority in religious discipline has
been delegated to the General Government. It must
rest with the States, as far as it can be in any human
authority." (letter to Samuel Miller, Jan. 23, 1808)
"I do not believe it is for
the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate
to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its
doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the
general government should be invested with the power of
effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them.
Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The
enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious
society has a right to determine for itself the times
for these exercises and the objects proper for them
according to their own particular tenets; and
this right can
never be safer than in their own hands where the
Constitution has deposited it... Every one
must act according to the dictates of his own reason,
and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been
given to the President of the United States, and no
authority to direct the religious exercises of his
constituents." (letter to Samuel Miller, Jan. 23, 1808)
"No provision in our
Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which
protects the
rights of conscience against the power of its public
functionaries, were it possible that any of
these should consider a conquest over the conscience of
men either attainable or applicable to any desirable
purpose." (Letters to the Methodist Episcopal Church at
New London, Connecticut, Feb. 4, 1809)
"In matters of religion, I
have considered that
its free
exercise is placed by the constitution independent of
the power of the federal government. I have
therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the
religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as
the constitution found them, under the direction of
state or church authorities acknowledged by the several
religious societies." (Jefferson's Second Inaugural
Address)
"In justice, too, to our
excellent Constitution, it ought to be observed, that it
has not
placed our religious rights under the power of any
public functionary. The power, therefore, was
wanting, not less than the will, to injure these
rights." (Letter to the Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church at Pittsburg, Dec. 9, 1808)
"...(O)ur
rulers can
have no authority over such natural rights,
only as we have submitted to them. The rights of
conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.
We are answerable for them to our God. The
legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only
as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for
my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. In
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." (Notes on
Virginia, 1785)
Andrew Lipscomb and
Albert Bergh, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,
20 volumes