By John F. Doherty, Public Discourse. (Photo: Micah Fischer/Unsplash)
Studies suggest that most Americans still support the separation of church and state. Significant segments of the population, however, disagree. Catholic neo-integralism sprang up not so long ago, proposing that churches direct government in ways not seen for generations. Other Christians have moved in a similar direction. No doubt such movements are emboldened by the retreat of church–state separation abroad in powerful countries like Russia and China. From the other direction, progressives increasingly suggest the state can require religious people to act against their beliefs, whether by participating in same-sex weddings, having their children instructed in radical gender ideology, or breaking the seal of confession.
The most ardent opponents of church–state separation are a minority. But many are young, devoted, and not going away, and older generations could do a better job of answering them. We all need to remember why, from its beginning, America has tried to keep religion and politics disentangled, and what great benefits that separation has produced for both religion and politics. An excellent place to start is Alexis de Tocqueville’s exploration of the question in Democracy in America.
The First of Political Institutions Never Mixes Directly in Government
In that work, Tocqueville (a Frenchman) presented the observations from his nine-month tour of America in 1830, hoping to explain, among other things, the young republic’s prosperity that had surprised many Europeans. Among the reasons for America’s success, he gives special credit to Americans’ religion, “the first of their political institutions.”
He writes that religion “does not give [Americans] the taste for freedom”; that comes rather from living under “equality of conditions.” But contrary to what today’s secular progressives might think, religion “singularly facilitates” Americans’ use of their freedom. In a democracy where “the law permits the . . . people to do everything, religion” (particularly Christianity, the religion of nearly all Americans at the time) “prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare everything.”