Americans United welcomed the introduction of a resolution in Congress honoring the separation of church and state.
U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced the resolution — H. Res. 773 — on Sept. 30. It references two important speeches in church-state history: President John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960, and President Ulysses S. Grant’s Sept. 29, 1875, speech to Army veterans in Des Moines.
Both presidents strongly endorsed church-state separation in their speeches. Kennedy famously said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
Kennedy continued, “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
During Grant’s speech, he endorsed secular public education and called for no public funding of religious schools.
“Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school,” Grant proposed. “Resolve that either the state or nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good, common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the church and state forever separate.” (Read more about Grant’s church-state views on page 9.)
The House resolution references other periods of history, saying in part, “Whereas the concept of separation of church and state, often articulated as ‘a wall of separation’, was deeply important to many of the Founding Fathers, including James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who famously used the phrase in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists emphasizing the distinct spheres of government and religious belief; Whereas James Madison, often referred to as the ‘Father of the Constitution’, was a strong advocate for religious liberty and authored the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, arguing against state support for religious instruction and further solidifying the intellectual foundations for the separation principle…”
It also warns Americans about “the rise of extreme right-wing Christian nationalism, which seeks to use the power of government to impose a narrow religious dogma and orthodoxy on the American people” and says this movement “poses a significant threat to the principles of religious diversity, democratic governance, and the constitutional separation of church and state…”
The resolution concludes by calling on Congress to encourage “all Americans to reflect upon the historical and ongoing importance of maintaining a clear distinction between governmental authority and religious institutions, ensuring that the rights of all citizens, regardless of their beliefs, are protected” and it “opposes extreme right-wing Christian nationalism and all forms of religious extremism that seek to undermine the constitutional principles of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.”
AU President and CEO Rachel Laser welcomed the introduction of the resolution.
“We applaud Reps. Ansari, Huffman and Raskin, with the support of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, for recognizing the fundamental role church-state separation plays in our democracy,” Laser said. “This bedrock principle protects everyone’s religious freedom — the freedom to live as ourselves and believe as we choose, as long as we don’t harm others. … This House resolution is a breath of fresh air because our country needs a national recommitment to the separation of church and state before it’s too late. Our democracy depends on it.”