In a recent debate between Ohio U.S. Senate candidates Morgan Harper (D) and Josh Mandel (R), the question of the separation of church and state came up.
Watch:
Here is Mandel’s answer in writing:
I do not believe in the separation of church and state. The founders of this country…did not believe in separation of church and state. When you read the United States Constitution, nowhere…do you read about separation of church and state. It does not exist. When I started this campaign, I made a decision, and the decision I made was rather than run my campaign through traditional Republican Party groups, I was going to run my campaign through churches. The reason is, we are not going to save this country in political offices. We are not going to save this country in big corporate office towers. We’re going to save this country in churches and barns and kitchen tables throughout this state and throughout this country. The Judeo-Christian bedrock of America is the foundation of this country. America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Not on Muslim values. Not on atheism. But on Judeo-Christian values. There’s so many factors that separate that Judeo-Christian belief set from these other belief sets like Islam and atheism. And one of the main differentiating factors is our belief in good over evil and our willingness to fight for good over evil.
Let’s break this down:
- Mandel is right. The United States Constitution does not use the words “separation of church and state.”
- Mandel says that the founding fathers did not believe in separation of church and state. The last time I checked, Thomas Jefferson was a founding father and he did believe in separation of church and state. He used this phrase in an 1802 letter to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut who were chafing under the state’s Congregational religious establishment. The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson said that these words were the equivalent of “building a wall of separation between Church & State.” So at least one founding father believed in the separation of church and state.
- But what about the other founding fathers? The writers of the Constitution may not have affirmed the “separation of church and state” using these precise words, but the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” implies that there is a fundamental different between the church and the state at the federal level. In other words, nearly all of our founding fathers believed that there was a barrier between the church and the national government. We can debate whether that barrier should be as “high” or “impregnable” as Justice Hugo Black made it out to be in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education case, but the barrier does exist. We are not a theocracy. Nor do we allow government to interfere with religious worship and practice.
- It would seem that ministers who allow Mandel to “run his campaign through” their churches are in violation of the Johnson Amendment of the United States tax code. There are many conservatives who believe that Donald Trump removed Johnson Amendment removed from the tax code. He did not.
- The United States of America was not founded solely on Judeo-Christian principles. It is more accurate to say that the United States was founded on the principle of religious liberty, and this includes religious liberty for both Muslims and atheists. If you want to explore this further, I recommend this primer. 🙂
- Mandel believes that the Judeo-Christian tradition is unique because it is willing to “fight for good over evil.” I know Mandel is young, but he must remember September 11, 2001 when Muslim terrorists also believed that they were fighting for good over evil. I am not a scholar of world religions, but I would guess most religions believe that they are engaged in a battle between good and evil. Also, does Mandel really believe that an atheist cannot live an ethical or “good” life?
- It seems as if Mandel, like many conservative evangelicals, needs a healthy dose of secularism.
Yes, this guy is running for a seat in the United States Senate.