Is the term “separation of church and state” in the language of the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution? In a word, NO. Here is the actual text directly from the US Constitution, 1st Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (1)
The era had the King of England as the head of both the Church of England and the head of Parliament. The colonists felt that the dual role provided too much power in the hands of a single person. The founders were determined NOT to repeat the government structure that they had just cast off. The Monarchy and Parliamentary system of England was what they just worked so hard to remove.
The First Freedoms, written by Thomas Curry in 1987, included extensive research about the time before and after the Revolutionary War in America directly dismissed a well-known argument about the contention of the 1st Amendment’s intended purpose included abstaining from favoring one religion while inferred assistance to all religions.(2)
Consider that in the early days of the country there was no official ‘church’ building in most places throughout the colonies. How could the amendment have meant that no religious expression could take place in government buildings or school houses? Oftentimes, the school house shared duties with the church service on weekends once a building could be constructed in a small area.
The amendment also says that no religion can be prohibited. Even before the colonies became a country unto themselves most religions were already present in the colonies or territories that other countries had founded such as Spain or France. A personal assignment, should you want to take up the task, is to research how many various religions apart from Christianity were present in the early colonies. You will be surprised, I promise you!
A more recent book written by Daniel Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State, is an excellently researched text about the topic.(3) Dreisbach outlined, in extensive detail, the understanding of the colonial era’s interpretation as well as how the modern-day abuse of the term used by founding father Thomas Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” from his 1802 Inauguration speech.
The founding fathers were, for the most part, weary of big government and created an incredibly unique approach to the problem. I would encourage any American to look into what it means to be an American through the eyes of the earliest of us. We were a melting pot even then, with a wide range of political and religious ideals. Investigate the concepts and what the ‘people’ set out to build. Refrain from getting caught up in the poor approved behaviors of the day. Every person from every point in history has had flaws. We strive for the ideals, not the mirror the people’s actions. Religion was a strong foundational principle throughout the founding communities, documents, governments, and so on. It gave us strength and we should return to that foundation again.
Sources:
(1) Amendment I of The Constitution of the United States of America; 1791.
(2) Curry, Thomas J. The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1987.
(3) Dreisbach, Daniel L. Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State New York: New York University Press, 2002.