At Conservatism Conference, panel challenges philosophy of church-state separation

Washington D.C., Jul 12, 2024 / 17:25 pm

A panel at the annual National Conservatism Conference challenged the efficacy of a strong separation of church and state in the United States — calling into question the conventional wisdom of many thinkers on both the political left and the political right.

“A good society educates the young to look above … and not just below,” R.R. Reno, the editor of the Christian ecumenical journal First Things, said during the July 9 panel at the conference, held in Washington, D.C.

Reno, the only Catholic on the panel, argued the case that Catholics should not fear efforts to dismantle the separation of church and state but should rather “rejoice over … [the] demise of extreme secularism.”

The other panelists were Timon Cline, who is Presbyterian and the editor of the American Reformer; Josh Hammer, who is Jewish and an editor at Newsweek; and Josh Mitchell, who is Protestant and a professor of political theory at Georgetown University.

Panelists, who were speaking at a breakout session titled “Separation of Church and State Has Failed,” discussed some efforts in Republican-led states to peel away at the hard barrier that separates church and state in the country. 

Those efforts include Bible literacy bills proposed in some state legislatures, a new Louisiana law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments, and a new Florida law that allows public schools to hire religious chaplains for counseling students.

All of these bills have faced legal challenges from advocacy groups that claim the legislation violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause. That clause reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1940s ruled on several cases related to the establishment clause. The high court took a hard-line interpretation of the provision as creating a strong barrier between church and state, citing a letter from Thomas Jefferson that called for a “wall of separation” between the two.

Reno argued that Catholics should oppose this interpretation and that it should be revisited by the Supreme Court. “Justice [John] Roberts, tear down that wall,” Reno said in a reference to Ronald Reagan’s famous order to Mikhail Gorbachev regarding the Berlin Wall.

Under the strict interpretation of separation, Reno warned that “even the slightest hint of public support for religion would be a violation.” This, he argued, impedes a state’s duty to promote the general welfare of its population, which includes a duty “to promote religion.” 

According to Reno, “a free society” requires “moral citizenry,” and embracing the ideology of secularism at the federal level “undermines the American tradition of well-ordered liberty.”

“Our duty to honor and serve God is not [simply] a revealed truth,” Reno said, noting that all societies have historically recognized the importance of serving a conception of God or gods.

“It’s a truth of natural law,” Reno explained, arguing that the “true nature of that God is revealed in Scripture.”

Reno, along with Mitchell, made that case that federally imposed secularism is not true neutrality in matters of religion. Rather, Mitchell argued, society has embraced “incomplete religion,” which seeks to take the place of Christianity.

The incomplete religion adopted in the United States, Mitchell posited, is “identity politics,” in which there is an “oppressor” class and an “oppressed” class, where the oppressed is “never guilty of anything, no matter how many laws they break” and there is “an unpayable debt of the transgressor [that] must be reckoned with.”

Mitchell contrasted identity politics with Christianity, in which humanity’s sin breaks them from God and Christ’s death on the cross and Resurrection from the dead restores human nature and provides an opportunity for forgiveness and redemption. In the secular religion, he warned, “there is no forgiveness.” 

“We already have an established church,” Mitchell said. “... Politics and religion have become one.”

Mitchell noted that every society that has abandoned Christianity has embraced an “incomplete religion,” such as the Atheistic Cult of Reason following the French revolution, which oversaw widespread atrocities against Christians, and the Soviet Union’s imposition of atheistic communism and its persecution of Christians following the Russian revolution.

“After Christendom does not come secularism,” Mitchell said.

Hammer, meanwhile, argued that the solution is not to get rid of the ruling class but “rather we are trying to replace the ruling class with our people.” He said those efforts include building up competing institutions but also trying to make inroads in established institutions.

According to Hammer, secularism can be fought with good statescrafting. 

Similarly, Cline noted that good laws can affect culture, just like bad laws have. As an example of a bad law affecting culture, he noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s imposition of legalized homosexual civil marriages on every state, noting that now “marriage is a moot point” and “no one talks about it.”

The National Conservatism Conference, which is a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation, was held in Washington, D.C., from July 8 through July 10.