Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were the two men most responsible for what we call separation of church and state in America. True, the phrase itself is nowhere in the Constitution, but it permeates their writing and thinking on the topic, and that of their mentors, especially the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke.

Since the separation doctrine is usually called on nowadays by atheist or secular groups trying to keep government from promoting Christianity, it is easy to forget that the separation doctrine was meant to protect religion, not to dishonor it. Mixing religion with civil authority was wrong, the Founders knew, because it was wrong, as Roger Williams put it a century before, "to pull God and Christ and Spirit out of heaven and subject them unto natural, sinful inconstant man."

To Madison, it was precisely because "It is the duty of every man to render the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to Him," that religion ought to be "wholly exempt from" the "cognizance" of "civil society." Both Jefferson and Madison were devoted believers in pure Christianity. But by this they did not necessarily mean the evangelical Protestantism that is dominant in America today. Jefferson meant Unitarianism. He was widely denounced as an atheist in his day for denying the divinity of Christ and the virgin birth. Madison commended sects (he mentions Quakers and Mennonites by name) that relied on no "compulsive support" to spread their doctrines and avoid "pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both superstition, bigotry and persecution."

As American courts have overturned customs such as official public school prayer and city-sponsored manger scenes, they may have outrun popular opinion, but they have not outrun the Founders. Madison, for instance, went so far as to propose that the national census should not list "religious minister" as an occupation since "the general government is proscribed from the interfering, in any matter whatever, in matters respecting religion; and it may be though to do this in ascertaining who and who are not ministers of the gospel."

Madison also made it clear that he did not merely mean the federal government. He meant all levels of government. He wrote about civil society as a whole. America is a Christian nation by personality. It is fairly saturated with Christianity. "In God We Trust" is inscribed on the money, though only after a coalition of Protestant church groups failed to rewrite the Constitution to "indicate that this is a Christian nation." They failed in Congress and in the states, but amongst their supporters was a director of the U.S. Mint during the Civil War. After getting Congress to grant him the power to control the design of the coinage, he promptly Christianized America's money. Not all Christians approved, and Theodore Roosevelt wrote that "to put such a motto on coins ... is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege." He sought to remove it when the currency was redesigned under his presidency, but had to back down under political pressure from the church people.

Personally, I prefer what was on the money back in 1787, when the Constitution was written: "Mind Your Business." As Madison put it, "religion flourishes in greater purity without (rather) than with the aid of government."

Those who insist that American must return to its "Christian roots" often are stunned to learn that there is no mention of "God," under any disguise, in the United States Constitution. They can, however, turn to the Declaration of Independence and find a comforting reference to the "creator" as the author of our civil rights. Washington and some others make frequent reference to "providence," as a force guiding the young nation, in their speeches and public writings. What of that? Were the Founders entirely rooted in the Bible after all? Or is there another explanation?

The men who led America's colonies to break with Britain and set up their own government faced the challenges of all lawgivers: To convince a people to change an entire mode of government, to convince the privileged to give up certain privileges and everyone to take a risk on something untried. They had to somehow set up the social institutions without first having the social spirit which those institutions will foster, and which will ultimately sustain them.

Throughout history, people in such positions have emphasized the divine authority, or guidance, in what they were doing.

Political students have long noted this dilemma, and its usual solution. "[A]s the lawgiver can for these reasons employ neither force nor argument," Rousseau wrote, "he must have recourse to an authority of another order, one which can compel without violence and persuade without convincing."[1]

Xenophon writes that Lycurgus wrote a set of laws for the Spartans, then asked the Delphic oracle to affirm them. Other sources [Plato] say Lycurgus went to the oracle first, and got the laws from it, which may have been what Lycurgus told people. Other Greek states also went to the oracle to get their laws.

Machiavelli wrote that, "The truth is that there has never been in any country an extraordinary legislator who has not invoked the deity; for otherwise his laws would not have been accepted. A wise man knows many useful truths which cannot be demonstrated in such a way as to convince other people."[2]

George Washington referred to the political importance of religion in his "Farewell Address." He named it along with education and public credit -- a utilitarian list -- as things productive of "public felicity." In comparing Washington's final version of the address to Hamilton's original language, historians have discovered that the Father of Our Country softened the rhetoric on the importance of religion. Other more overt mentions of religion in Washington's speeches can be traced to his ghostwriters, Jonathan Trumbull and David Humphreys, a pair of pious New Englanders.

Washington was no less a separationist than Madison and Jefferson. He had had first-hand experience with the problem. As commander in chief, Washington outlawed New England regiments' "Pope's Day," as offensive to his Catholic soldiers. In 1777 he opposed a congressional plan to appoint brigade chaplains in the Continental Army. "Among many other weighty objections to the Measure," he wrote to John Hancock (then president of Congress), "it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess."

1. "The Social Contract," Book II, chap. vii.
2. "Discourses on Livy," Book V, chap. xi.