Separation of Church and State: a Collage

This is a collage essay I did for Composition 151 back in college (yes I do mean collage and not college) . The idea of this essay was to focus on the juxtaposition of segmented portions of text to tell a story. I used quotes to expose the idiosyncrasies and the propaganda of the Religious Right and the Christian Coalition.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-Amendment I
The Constitution of the United States of America

"Our nation's foundation was laid upon the bedrock of Biblical truths, truths clearly evident throughout our founding documents."

-Christian Coalition

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

-1797 Treaty with Tripoli
Signed by President Adams

"I founded the Christian Coalition as a pro-family citizen action organization to impact public policy on a local, state, and national level, to teach Christians effective citizenship, and to promote Christian values in government."

-Pat Robertson
Christian Coalition President

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State."

-The U.S. Supreme Court, 1947

"They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the left, and we're not going to take it anymore."

-Pat Robertson

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."

-Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 8-16-93

"The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality."

-Adolf Hitler

"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening."

- Pat Robertson
The 700 Club, Dec. 30, 1981

"The purpose of the 1st Amendment was not to create the idea or principle of separation of church and state. Instead, the 1st Amendment reinforced the meaning of the separation of church and state principle as it was embodied in the unamended constitution."

TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University is soliciting support with a full-page ad in U.S. News and World Report that features a bogus quotation about the Ten Commandments supposedly uttered by James Madison.

The ad, which appears in the April 9 edition of the magazine, is centered around a large-type assertion at the top of the page attributed to Madison. "We have staked the whole of our political institutions," Madison is quoted as saying, "upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

The ad gives no source for the statement, and with good reason: It appears nowhere in the writings of Madison. It was debunked years ago by Madison scholars and even many Religious Right leaders have admitted that the quote can't be substantiated.

In 1993, the curators of the Madison Papers at the University of Virginia were asked if they could verify the quote. They replied that they could not. Wrote Curators John Stagg and David Mattern, "We did not find anything in our files remotely like the sentiment expressed in the extract you sent us. In addition, the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, views which he expressed time and time again in public and in private."

-Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State

Another popular misquotation by the religious right has Madision saying that religion is the foundation of government. David Barton, in his book The Myth of Separation contains a popular version of that this quotation, on page 120:

Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe . . . Religion . . . [is] the basis and foundation of government."

This isn't the only form of the quotation. Here are some other variations:

• " . . . Religion . . . [is] the basis and foundation of government."
• "Religion . . . [is] the basis and foundation of government."
• "Religion [is] the basis and foundation of government."
• "Religion is the basis and foundation of government."

I would say the most honest form is the first and second, because they do indicate it has been extracted from something else, the third gives such an indication as well.

The last two forms are the least honest. However, all forms are incorrect, because Madison never said anything like this.

The first clue that something is wrong here is that these pages turn out to correspond to Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, a document written in support of separation of church and state.

I will use capitals to indicate the words Barton selected to arrive at his newly created false quote:

Because finally, 'the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his RELIGION according to the dictates of conscience' IS held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its orgin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the 'Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as THE BASIS AND FOUNDATION OF GOVERNMENT,' it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.

-Jim Allison

"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."

-James Madison

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

-Pat Robertson
1993 interview with Molly Ivins

"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its own stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility."

-Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story

"Prayer should be a freedom, not an outlawed practice that places it in violation of our constitution. When prayer was a freedom prior to 1963, our schools did not have the drugs, immorality and violence in the measure they now experience. It was the power of prayer that protected and provided the moral tapestry for students, teachers and parents."

-www.truthbroadcasting.org

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith...We need believing people."

-Adolf Hitler

"The crucial role of education is to provide young people with the information and methods they need in order to learn how to think independently. Education has liberated mankind from the shackles of myth, superstition, and unchallenged tradition. But the prevailing trend - from both the "progressive" left and the religious right - is to reverse this development, by enshrining feelings over facts and faith over reason."

-Robert W. Tracinski

"When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. `What do you mean?' the media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"

"The New World Order,"

"Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

-John Adams

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

-Thomas Jefferson

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."

-John Adams
"A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-Amendment I
The Constitution of the United States of America

SourcesAmericans United for the Separation of Church and State http://www.au.org/

The Anti-Pat Robertson / Christian Coalition Site http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7027/patrobertson.html

The Christian Coalition
http://www.cc.org/

The Freedom Forum
http://www.freedomforum.org/

Truth Broadcasting Company
http://www.truthbroadcasting.org/