Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
that brings you news,
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views, discussion, analysis
and up-to-date information
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on religious
liberty in the United States
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and around the
world, today and yesterday.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the program,
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a very special
guest is Allen Reinach,
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Attorney Allen Reinach,
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Executive Director of
the Church State Council.
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Let's really go back...
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I thought you would say
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religious liberty
news past and future.
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No. That's why I
was trying to perfect.
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I thought that
was perfect. Okay.
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Yeah. I mentioned
that we have breaking news
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and there's a lot of--
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I mean the whole
world as you look at it
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especially the
Middle East, it's nothing
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but a religious
issue percolating
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and often turning into violence.
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But when we talk
about religious liberty
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especially in the United
States, I think we can do
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no better than to
go back to the puritans
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and some of those colonies
and established communities
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that have so much informed
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how we see it in
the United States today.
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And I really want
to focus, Lincoln,
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on understanding the
origins and the significance
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of the separation
of church and state.
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Because there's so
much misunderstanding
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from both the
left and the right.
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The left distorts it,
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the right attacks the
distortion and rightly so.
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But the true
principle is largely obscured.
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Now before you get into
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what I know
that you want to say.
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On the separation
of church and state
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I think it's worth putting
out unequivocally right away.
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It's a Protestant concept.
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It goes to the
origin of Protestantism
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even though John
Calvin for example in Geneva
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had trouble seeing it.
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All right. And Martin Luther
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I think dirtied his
apparel a little bit on it,
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I mean he
didn't quite understand
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sometime in the
presence rebellion
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and things like that.
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But that said, as a movement,
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as a reaction to
the established church
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and its unholy
alliance with the state.
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Protestantism did
clarify and hold up.
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If I can mix that metaphor,
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the separation
of church and state
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as an overarching principle.
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And now you want to
link it to New England. I do.
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But before we get to New England
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throughout the
era of Christendom
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you're standing before God
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depended upon your participating
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in the life of
the church community
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and the sacraments.
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There was no foundation
for individual rights,
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it was very communitarian.
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It was not about a
personal relationship
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by faith with Jesus Christ.
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Even though I
said politically I--
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through it
mattered, Martin Luther,
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of course his central principle
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that the
priesthood of all believers
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and that we stand before God
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not needing a priest. Right.
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That's very central to
the separation of churches.
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So 1529, there is a convocation
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in the German town of Spire.
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The empire wants to restrict
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the progress of
the reformed gospel
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and the German
princess would already
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embraced the reformation.
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They issued that famous protest
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that is where we get
the term Protestant from.
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And they
resisted the restrictions
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on the
proclamation of the gospel
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and the premise
that they announced,
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the principle was, that
in matters of conscience
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the majority has
no power. Absolutely.
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So this is really
what makes Protestant--
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what makes Protestantism.
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It was a very
political gathering of course
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but they stated
a spiritual truth.
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And when you think about it,
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all of the core
doctrines of the reformation
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that deal really around the idea
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of a personal relationship
with Christ through faith
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are complete repudiation
of the communitarian impulse
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of the Medieval Church.
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Now it laid the
foundation for individual rights
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because the individual
conscience is answerable to God.
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There's a personal relationship
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and neither,
neither of the church
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nor the state had any
legitimate right or authority
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to interfere between
the soul and its creator.
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That was the developing concept
of Protestantism absolutely.
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Now they did implemented
as you mentioned with Calvin
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but, you know, it
didn't take the Anabaptist log.
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The Anabaptists
were being drowned
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because of their practice
of adult believer baptism
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and so, you know,
as the ultimate insult
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you want to be baptized.
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They will hold
you under the water.
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So when they
realized that the state
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was persecuting for
them then for their beliefs,
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they began to understand
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the separation
of church and state,
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that the state had no right
to enforce religious orthodoxy.
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So what I was
trying to point out.
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Protestantism or the
Protestant Reformation
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was not one single threat.
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Of course not.
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It developed not
quite spontaneously
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but as a movement it appeared
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to sort of just
come out of nowhere.
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And it had several threads
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and they're still
different in some regards,
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but there are
some common principles
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that characterized
Protestantism even today.
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So one of them,
you know, a central one
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is the separation
of church and state
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or expressed
elsewhere only partially
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priesthood of all believers.
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So John went--
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But can I throw
something in because I thought--
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what you're saying I think,
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counterpoints
what we're seeing now.
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In our era put forward
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by a number of the
major Christian churches
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is this developing
idea of the common good.
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I believe it's going back,
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Martin used to describe
so well from the Middle Ages.
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The common good is an emphasis
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on the community as
against the individual.
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Absolutely. All right.
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So let's bring
this over to America.
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John Winthrop, you know,
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leading light of the Puritans
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coming over,
preaches a famous sermon.
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He invokes Deuteronomy--
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Which is been told to us--
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told you when we
were talking about it?
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The greatest sermon ever.
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You could argue that,
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but it certainly
a landmark statement
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of their political directives
and what they stood for,
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how they would relate to
society and then lead the world.
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So their flaying
persecution in Europe
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and they are trying to establish
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a new community
on America shores.
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They know that
it is a very risky,
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a very dangerous enterprise
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and they are
covetous of God's blessing
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and he invokes the
blessings and cursings
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passage of Deuteronomy 30.
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And the Puritan ethos
believed that their prosperity,
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their success depended
upon the blessing of God,
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and the blessing
of God was dependant
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upon their moral and
spiritual faithfulness.
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And as that became implemented,
both the magistrates,
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the government and the
clergy cooperated together
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to uphold the
spiritual orthodoxy
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and faithfulness
of the community.
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And they didn't
have in that colony,
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not very good
separation of church and state.
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They didn't have any separation.
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Well, the only
separation they had
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was that the
clergy were not allowed
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to serve in government.
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Well, they had recognized
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the higher authority
of spiritual matters.
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They went like-- in England
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a few years later
they challenged the king
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because he claimed to
be God's representative
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into the divine right of kings.
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The Puritans didn't see that.
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What I mean is, they didn't
accept that the civil power
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automatically had
God on their side,
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but they were very
comfortable with the civil
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and the religious
powers working in consort.
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So Roger Williams is a purely
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Orthodox Calvinist minister,
a Puritan of the Puritans.
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Well, studied in England.
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Very well respected
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and he witnessed
persecution in England.
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He witnessed
burnings at the stake.
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He comes over to Massachusetts
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and immediately he gets himself
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into trouble
with the authorities
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because he's a
different kind of thinker.
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So for example,
he started preaching
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that they should pay
the Indians for their land.
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Well, they tried to shut him up.
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That's against the imperialist
agenda if nothing else.
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Well, they actually succeeded in
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getting him to agree
not to talk about that.
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So that wasn't why he
got himself booted out--
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I've forgotten that.
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I've read the story many times
but I've forgotten that one.
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I know he was very
sympathetic to them.
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I didn't realize on the payment.
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So he agreed to
keep hold his peace
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and not advocate for that.
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They eventually came around
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and did pay the
Indians for their land.
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But where he took a special--
Ten beans instead of five.
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Where he took a special umbrage
was at giving the magistrates,
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the government
authority to enforce
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what Protestants called
"The first table of the law."
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The religious
obligations of the commandments
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that have to do
with your worship of God.
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Blasphemy, idolatry,
Sabbath breaking, these things.
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And Williams very forcefully
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argued against
the civil authority
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having any legitimate
role with respect to religion.
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And that got him literally
booted out of the colony.
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They were gonna put him
back on a boat to England
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where he would have
certainly been killed.
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So he fled for his
life-- He fled for his life.
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The Indians protected him
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during a fierce freezing
cold winter with lots of snow
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and he moved
south and founded what,
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community that he
called Providence,
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I need to throw in a
little historical comparison.
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I've always been amused on this.
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I was a history
major for many years.
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And I love history
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the way it sort of
glosses over certain things.
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You made a lot of it.
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But like in Australia,
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one of the greatest
explorations was Burke and Wills
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a doomed expedition
to try to cross Australia
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through the
center and, you know,
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they died off,
they got mixed up,
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they lost their food depots
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and in the end they
were reduced to two men,
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one of the leaders
and his commandment--
00:10:43.90\00:10:47.81
the second in commander rather
wandering in the wilderness.
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Well, they were
saved by the aborigines,
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who took them in and
then they lived to get back.
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I mean, this
whole exceptionalism
00:10:59.30\00:11:01.57
exists on this level when
there's a real world existing,
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they already had it-- Right.
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It sort of like a teenager,
00:11:06.45\00:11:07.94
you kick him out of the house
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so he goes to the
neighbor to survive.
00:11:09.03\00:11:12.12
All right. Yeah.
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The Indians were very
civil in the early days.
00:11:15.06\00:11:17.14
Remember they had bailed
00:11:17.17\00:11:21.28
in the Thanksgiving
model that we now have.
00:11:21.31\00:11:23.65
It was the Indians really
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bailing out the
starving westerners.
00:11:24.74\00:11:27.28
And Roger
Williams of course was--
00:11:27.31\00:11:30.56
He wasn't just
saved in the winter.
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He went to live with
them. They had settlements.
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They had normal
life during the winter.
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Right, of course.
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Well, so the thing
that got Williams in trouble
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and there was a very sharp
debate that comes down to us
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because both sides wrote
and argued against one another.
00:11:43.75\00:11:49.52
The Puritan ethos was that
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God would judge them
for their own faithfulness.
00:11:51.73\00:11:54.76
And that led to a very
religiously exclusive society.
00:11:54.79\00:11:59.08
They banished Quakers.
They banished Catholics.
00:11:59.11\00:12:02.62
It led ultimately to
the excesses of Salem
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and the witch trials
and the burnings and all.
00:12:06.45\00:12:09.69
There were Quakers who
were also hung in Massachusetts.
00:12:09.72\00:12:13.86
Williams had a different view.
00:12:13.89\00:12:16.56
He portrayed the
church as a garden
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protected by a hedge
or wall of separation,
00:12:21.07\00:12:25.26
protecting the
purity of the church
00:12:25.29\00:12:28.13
from the
wilderness of the state.
00:12:28.16\00:12:31.29
The phrase "Wall of Separation"
between church and state
00:12:31.32\00:12:35.85
that we attribute to Jefferson
00:12:35.88\00:12:37.76
really belongs
to Roger Williams.
00:12:37.79\00:12:39.96
Well, I mean,
Jefferson did say it.
00:12:39.99\00:12:41.63
But he was not--
Jefferson was not the one.
00:12:41.66\00:12:43.92
Jefferson
borrowed it from Williams.
00:12:43.95\00:12:46.93
And Williams
annunciated it well,
00:12:46.96\00:12:48.98
but as I think we've discussed.
00:12:49.01\00:12:50.45
I mean, it was already a
developing Protestant concept.
00:12:50.48\00:12:54.64
Well, within the
radical reformation, yes.
00:12:54.67\00:12:57.48
The understanding that neither
of the state nor the church
00:12:57.51\00:13:01.03
had any legitimate authority
00:13:01.06\00:13:03.11
to impose upon the
rights of conscience that was--
00:13:03.14\00:13:07.28
that was one of the
strains of the reformation.
00:13:07.31\00:13:10.28
You write this
issue with conscience
00:13:10.31\00:13:12.78
really came to the
full with Anne Hutchinson
00:13:12.81\00:13:14.66
in the early
settlement there, didn't it?
00:13:14.69\00:13:16.83
That's really what was going on.
00:13:16.86\00:13:18.18
They didn't like that she
believes something differently.
00:13:18.21\00:13:21.03
She was really
doing nothing at all
00:13:21.06\00:13:22.37
except discussions in her home.
00:13:22.40\00:13:25.30
And she round up being exiled
00:13:25.33\00:13:27.41
to down to Brooklyn ultimately.
00:13:27.44\00:13:29.68
And they said you're
not fit for this society
00:13:29.71\00:13:32.13
because you don't think like us.
00:13:32.16\00:13:33.57
Well, Roger Williams
was definitely tested
00:13:33.60\00:13:37.40
because there were
all kinds of people
00:13:37.43\00:13:40.44
that took refuge in Road Island.
00:13:40.47\00:13:42.89
You know, we think
of the Quakers today
00:13:42.92\00:13:44.53
as a very
peaceful kind of people.
00:13:44.56\00:13:46.86
Well, moved by the spirit or so
00:13:46.89\00:13:49.44
they said the women would
run up and down the church
00:13:49.47\00:13:53.28
and take their clothes off
and that one scandalizes today.
00:13:53.31\00:13:56.94
The Quakers they
were shaking and dancing
00:13:56.97\00:13:59.34
and doing all sorts of stuff
00:13:59.37\00:14:00.45
as they were
moved by the spirit.
00:14:00.48\00:14:02.03
But in ways they
were like Pentecostals.
00:14:02.06\00:14:05.77
Exactly. And not in equivalent.
00:14:05.80\00:14:07.53
And Williams would debate
them and argued with them.
00:14:07.56\00:14:10.87
He was disgusted by them,
00:14:10.90\00:14:12.68
but they were permitted
to settle in Road Island.
00:14:12.71\00:14:15.84
The oldest Jewish
synagogue in United States
00:14:15.87\00:14:20.22
is in Newport, Road Island.
00:14:20.25\00:14:21.88
People were
allowed to be citizens.
00:14:21.91\00:14:23.98
Let me test my idea.
00:14:24.01\00:14:25.16
In some ways I think they
were like religious anarchist.
00:14:25.19\00:14:28.97
It's a good discussion
00:14:29.00\00:14:31.18
and we'll pick
it up after a break.
00:14:31.21\00:14:32.88
Please stay with us.
00:14:32.91\00:14:34.02