History Lesson

Brie foe, Chablis fighter and Creationist Tim Pawlenty tries his hand at history:

We need to remember as others try to push out or marginalise people of faith—we need to remember this and always remember it—the constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.

The Economist puts the governor straight:

Madison’s goal was twofold; to protect religion from government influence was, indeed, one of them. But the other was, in fact, to protect the government from undue religious influence. Of official churches and their clergy, he wrote

In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people.
The founders established a pattern that helped make America one of the most religious countries in the world. The separation of church and state—yes, that is exactly what Jefferson and Madison wanted—was to protect both from each other. Modern secularists like to play up deists like Jefferson and quotations like Madison’s above to downplay the religiosity of the early republic; they go too far when they make simple statements like “the founders were deists.” Many were not.

The modern religious activists like Mr Pawlenty, though, commit the worse intellectual crime of effacing the secularism, deism and disestablishmentarianism of so many of the founders, baldly claiming they meant to put (Christianity’s) God at the centre of American public life. On the whole, they most certainly did not. Mr Pawlenty notes that the Declaration of Independence mentions the “Creator”. He probably knows, but does not mention, that the writer was the most deist of all the founders, Jefferson. Mr Pawlenty also says that 49 of 50 state constitutions mention God. He forgot one thing: the federal constitution does not. This was not because it slipped the founders’ minds.