Lauren Boebert denounces faith-state separation

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.-3rd), in a speech to a major church, denounced the separation of faith and state. Indeed she called explicitly for the “church” to “direct the government.” She’s right. Even James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment, never intended a separation of faith and state. The Supreme Court, with two key decisions, opened a door for faith to re-enter. Now people of faith must boldly enter it.

What Lauren Boebert said

Lauren Boebert spoke for about an hour and a half to the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colorado. (Many different Cornerstone Christian Centers show up on an engine search. The one in Basalt owns the YouTube channel that carried Rep. Boebert’s speech on June 26, 2022.)

Here is the key excerpt from her speech:

The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.

The Danbury Baptist Letter

By “letter” she refers to Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. He wrote it, of course, during the first year of his Presidency. The Library of Congress has the letter – as it should, because that library began as Thomas Jefferson’s private collection.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

This letter does not “stink,” as Lauren Boebert, perhaps in hyperbole, said it does. This paragraph provides a context almost no one takes into account. Note carefully:

[A person] owes account to none other [than God] for his faith or his worship.

And:

The legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.

What that means

That means that President Jefferson would never have supported a “Church of America.” In other words, how, or whether, one worships God is a person’s own business, not that of the government. Likewise, the government does not directly employ clergy with ministries to ordinary civilians.

But it does not mean that the government never supports the idea of religion. Separation of church and state means that the church does not act for the government, nor take its orders. But separation of church and state does not mean separation of faith and state.

For the spectacle of separation of faith and state, blame James G. Blaine – and President Ulysses S. Grant, who put him up to it. CNAV has covered the sorry history of Blaine and his Amendments before. The Supreme Court has, of course, repudiated Blaine with its decision in Carson v. Makin. And it repudiated even more “Blaine precedents” with Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Blaine acted as he did in the dark spirit of discrimination. Sadly, the Supreme Court still has on it three members who seem to believe that only atheism can avoid conflict. This trio will see one substitution next Term with the installation of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

What Lauren Boebert could have mentioned

In fact, twelve of the thirteen original States had “established” churches of their own. Though Madison declared that Congress should not establish a federal Church of America, no one proceeded against any of these State churches.

That is, until James G. Blaine proposed an amendment to the federal Constitution forbidding any government support for religious schools. That amendment failed of proposal, by four Senate votes. So he took his case to the States. Thirty-eight States ended up passing “Blaine Amendments,” though one, Louisiana, repealed its Amendment in 1974.

But it’s only fitting that Lauren Boebert, a member of the House of Representatives, should denounce a movement toward separation of faith and state by a past Speaker of the House.

How to move forward

Lauren Boebert, probably without realizing it, has touched on the need for America to become a civilizational state. A civilizational state has a civilizational principle. Atheism or “secular humanism” cannot serve as a civilizational principle. Atheism is in fact a cult of death. We see this cult in operation today, with people threatening “defiance” of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

That threat is probably empty – for one cannot “defy” a simple refusal to give orders, one way or another. But as CNAV said before, the Supreme Court didn’t find in the Constitution a right to life.

Actually, the Constitution assumes a right to life. For it enjoins the federal and State governments not to “deprive” a “person” of “life” “without due process of law.” So what is human life, and when does it begin? For answer, look to King David of Judah (Psalm 139:13-16).

That’s one reason why America should re-integrate faith and state. Nor is that so outlandish as people suppose. We’ve forgotten John Adams, who famously said:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

He was correct. Power abhors a vacuum, and without God, the power of a few human beings – an oligarchy – supervenes. The Supreme Court broke the back of the oligarchy. The American people must return to God before the oligarchy can recover.