{"id":7855,"date":"2022-08-31T17:08:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T21:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/au.org\/?page_id=7855"},"modified":"2025-11-04T12:42:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T17:42:26","slug":"separation-of-church-and-state-constitution","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/separation-of-church-and-state-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the separation of church and state in the constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Is the separation of church and state in the Constitution?<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Absolutely. Separation of church and state is in the Bill of Rights. Separation of church and state is in the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The separation of church and state is baked into our founding documents and our system of government.<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Still, plenty of people argue that because the specific phrase \u201cseparation of church and state\u201d doesn\u2019t appear word for word in the Constitution, there\u2019s no such thing.<\/p>

People like the newly elected\u00a0Speaker of the House Mike Johnson<\/a>, who\u00a0worked as a lawyer<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Alliance Defending Freedom<\/a>\u00a0and recently called this constitutional principle a \u201cmisnomer<\/a>.\u201d Or\u00a0Congresswoman Lauren Boebert:\u00a0<\/a>\u201cI\u2019m tired of this separation of church and state junk. That\u2019s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.\u201d \u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s former press secretary,\u00a0Kayleigh McEnany<\/a>, who said on Fox News that \u201cseparation of church and state found nowhere in our founding documents.\u201d And\u00a0Fox News<\/a>\u00a0host Pete Hegseth, who bit off more than he could chew against one literate guest.<\/p>

This argument\u2014that the actual words \u201cseparation of church and state\u201d aren\u2019t in the Constitution\u2014is feeble. As you might guess from our name,\u00a0Americans United for Separation of Church and State<\/a>, we\u2019ve heard it more times than we can count.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Powerful Metaphor.<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Firstly, yes. Thomas Jefferson penned the wall metaphor in a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. He celebrated the First Amendment for \u201cbuilding a wall of separation between Church & State.\u201d The Supreme Court has endorsed this view many times. First\u00a0in\u00a01878<\/a>. And then again \u201cin 1947, 1948, 1961 (three times), 1962, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1977, 1982, and again and again in countless concurrences, dissents, and lower court opinions,\u201d according to a recent\u00a0law review article<\/a>. The wall metaphor nicely sums up the relationship.<\/p>

James Madison also\u00a0used<\/a>\u00a0a similar phrase in a later essay, \u201cStrongly guarded \u2026 is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States.\u201d That\u2019s pretty clear. And he basically wrote the First Amendment and is known as the \u201cFather of the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>

Does it matter that the words aren\u2019t in the Constitution verbatim? No. Neither is the phrase \u201cfair trial,\u201d but we use that phrase to describe several big rights protected in the Bill of Rights.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Revolutionary Constitution.<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Church-state separation is woven into the very fabric of our Constitution.<\/p>

Our Constitution was the first to declare that power comes from people, not gods. The words \u201cWe the People\u201d are poetic, but so much more. They declared a new source of power.<\/p>

Our Constitution was the first not to mention a god or deity. Obviously, that was a deliberate choice. At the time, some people objected to the omission, but the framers insisted on a secular text<\/a>.<\/p>

Our Constitution was the first to ban religious tests for public office. That ban contains the most clear and emphatic language in a document that\u2019s often deliberately vague. It reads: \u201cNO<\/strong>\u00a0religious test\u2026\u00a0SHALL EVER<\/strong>\u00a0be required as a qualification \u2026\u00a0TO ANY<\/strong>\u00a0office or public trust \u2026\u201d That was the only mention of religion in the original, un-amended text.<\/p>

But that wasn\u2019t enough. The Framers wanted even more. So they wrote the First Amendment: \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof\u2026\u201d Jefferson revered those words so much that he wrote the metaphor that gives AU its name to this day. The amendment includes both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.<\/p>

The two clauses work together. The separation in the Establishment Clause is one of the primary ways we protect the religious freedom in the Free Exercise Clause.\u00a0Our Constitution guarantees a secular government; it does this in part to protect religious freedom for all.\u00a0That\u2019s why religious leaders have backed church-state separation from the\u00a0earliest days<\/a>\u00a0of the American colonies, to the\u00a0folks<\/a>\u00a0who founded AU, to the clergy on AU\u2019s\u00a0Faith Advisory Council<\/a>\u00a0today. True religious freedom\u00a0needs<\/i>\u00a0this separation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The American Original.<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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There\u2019s a lot wrong with our Constitution, but those secular ideals are right. They\u2019re also unique. They are real contributions, not just to political science and thought, but to all humanity. They are a pillar of our democracy.<\/p>

The \u201cwall of separation between church and state\u201d is an American original. It\u2019s an American invention. The idea was born in the Enlightenment. But it was first implemented in the \u201cAmerican Experiment.\u201d Until then, no other nation had sought to protect the people\u2019s right to think freely by separating religion and government. We should be proud of that fact. And we should fight any disinformation that threatens this ideal.<\/p>

Bookmark this page. And feel free to copy and paste any of these arguments next time you meet this talking point. The precise words may not be in the Constitution, but that core value\u2014the separation of church and state\u2014most definitely is.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the separation of church and state in the Constitution? Absolutely. Separation of church and state is in the Bill of Rights. Separation of church and state is in the U.S. Constitution. The separation of church and state is baked into our founding documents and our system of government. Still, plenty of people argue that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7868,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"issue_tax":[],"class_list":["post-7855","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7855"},{"taxonomy":"issue_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.au.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_tax?post=7855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}