The American founders extended the concept of tolerance and produced a bold new idea unknown in Europe: freedom of conscience. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) had established the practical rule that the religion of the ruler became the religion of the state. But this was simply a compromise solution aimed at stopping the interminable quarrels among the various Christian sects. In some ways “separation of church and state” also developed in America for the same reason. There were several denominations that wanted to dominate and impose their orthodoxy into law, but none were strong enough to do so everywhere. The Puritans predominated in Massachusetts, but the Anglicans were the majority in Virginia, and there was a substantial Catholic stronghold in Maryland. Ultimately the various groups agreed to leave the central government out of religion. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was passed largely with Christian support.As John Courtney Murray once said, it was not an article of faith, but an article of peace.
The genius of the American founders was to go beyond tolerance to insist that the central government stay completely out of the business of theology. Despite its novelty, this idea was a profoundly Christian one. The majority of the founders were devout Christians, although some of them, like Thomas Jefferson, were Deists. But whether they knew it or not, they were following Christ’s rule to keep the domains of Caesar and God separate. The founders in no way denied the Christian foundations of the American experiment. Even Jefferson, perhaps the least religious of them, argued that religious faith was the very foundation for liberty itself: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” After the Revolutionary War, the founders continued to hold public days of prayer, to appoint chaplains for Congress and the armed forces, and to promote religious values through the schools in the Northwest Territory.
Nor did they seek to insulate the central government from the province of morality. No “wall of separation” was intended here. On the contrary, the founders believed that morality was indispensable for their new form of government to succeed. Most of them shared George Washington’s view as expressed in his farewell address: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion:’ John Adams went even further: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” At the same time, the founders recognized that theological differences were the province of revelation and thus not a fit subject for democratic debate. They sought to exclude differences in theology precisely so that there could be reasoned disagreements over issues of morality, and so that the laws could reflect the prevailing moral sentiment of the people.
