On the day this article goes online, I won’t be at work. Nor will most Europeans, because it’s the Christian feast of the Ascension. Americans, on the other hand, will celebrate Memorial Day this same weekend (on Monday, May 25), a secular holiday remembering those who died in military service.
In this respect, the two sides of the Atlantic could not be more different. In Europe, it’s perfectly acceptable for the state to uphold religious traditions (as long as they’re Christian). Germany, for example, celebrates only three secular holidays — New Year’s Day, Labor Day and the Day of German Unity — but as many as eight religious holidays.
In the United States, the only official religious holiday is Christmas (although Thanksgiving implies thanking a deity for the harvest). The other eight federal holidays honor historical figures (Martin Luther King, George Washington, Christopher Columbus), patriotism (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day) or something more general (New Year’s Day, Labor Day).
Freedom of religious expression is the first freedom listed in the 1789 Bill of Rights; but the document tells the government it has no business in religious matters.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
But wait: wasn’t the United States founded by Christians? In the Catholic grade school I went to, the nuns portrayed American colonial history as the coming together of dissident religious groups, particularly Puritans, Quakers and Catholics, who weren’t tolerated by the Church of England. Certainly this was true of much of the population; and the Pilgrims and pioneers saw their faith tested and strengthened by the often harsh and hostile conditions in the New World. However, the only colony actually established as a religious haven was Maryland.
The Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, is the only founding document with a religious reference, and a vague one at that (to “Divine Providence”). The author, Thomas Jefferson, along with most of the American political thinkers of the time, was a deist. He believed that the natural world points to the existence of a god, but not necessarily to one who takes an inquisitive interest in our day-to-day affairs. (Jefferson also edited his own version of the New Testament in which he removed all reference to supernatural activity.)
Both Jefferson and James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights, believed strongly that church and state should have nothing to do with each other. Jefferson’s opinion, given in 1802 when he was president, later became the basis of numerous Supreme Court decisions. Today it’s well established that the government doesn’t tax churches, and that churches aren’t supposed to have a hand in politics.
This hasn’t stopped elected leaders with religious beliefs from posting the Ten Commandments or putting up Nativity scenes in front of public buildings. In the 1950s, such exercises of religious expression served to show that we were better than the communists. Today’s advocates argue that by doing these things, the state is not establishing a religion, but simply supporting an existing one, and is thus not at all in conflict with the Bill of Rights.
The oxymoronically named Americans United for the Separation of Church and State are fighting for a removal of religion from government practice, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion. They’re joined by the atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation, which currently has a billboard campaign going in a number of cities. Its motto, “Imagine no religion”, is taken from John Lennon’s song “Imagine”:
“Imagine there’s no heaven.
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.”
Above us only sky… That would be an ascension of a different kind. But don’t get me wrong: I still want the day off.
