Separation of Church and State

by Hamburger, Philip

• ISBN13: 9780674013742
• ISBN10: 0674013743
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later. Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(18)
I LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS LIBERTY	19	(90)
1 Separation, Purity, and Anticlericalism	21	(44)
2 Accusations of Separation	65	(14)
3 The Exclusion of the Clergy	79	(10)
4 Freedom from Religious Establishments	89	(20)
II EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY REPUBLICANISM	109	(82)
5 Demands for Separation: Separating Federalist Clergy from Republican Politics	111	(19)
6 Keeping Religion Out of Politics and Making Politics Religious	130	(14)
7 Jefferson and the Baptists: Separation Proposed and Ignored as a Constitutional Principle	144	(47)
III MID-NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICANISM	191	(94)
8 A Theologically Liberal, Anti-Catholic, and American Principle	193	(59)
9 Separations in Society	252	(16)
10 Clerical Doubts and Popular Protestant Support	268	(17)
IV LATE NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY CONSTITUTIONAL LAW	285	(194)
11 Amendment	287	(48)
12 Interpretation	335	(25)
13 Differences	360	(31)
14 An American Constitutional Right	391	(88)
Conclusion	479	(14)
Index	493