CHRISTMAS REMINDS US OF RELIGIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR SEPERATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

During the Christmas season (interestingly Protestant forces in Boston actually outlawed Christmas from 1659 to 1681 since it was a man-made holiday, When Americans banned Christmas, https://theweek.com/articles/479313/when-americans-banned-christmas ) there are always arguments about the mixing of religion and politics or the state.  Many Fundamentalist Christians (forgetting 1 Corinthians 5 which forbids the use of state laws to force belief leaving outsiders to God's judgment) argue that the separation of church and state is wrong. 

Christmas Day was formally declared a federal holiday by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.  The Supreme Court has explained that making Christmas a federal holiday was not an endorsement of Christian beliefs but “simply permits the government to acknowledge the holiday without expressing an allegiance to Christian beliefs, an allegiance that would truly favor Christians over non-Christians.”  County of Allegheny v. ACLU Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573, 611-12, 109 S. Ct. 3086(1989); Ganulin v. United States, 71 F. Supp. 2d 824 (S.D. Ohio 1999) (affirming the constitutionality of the federal Christmas holiday)

Fundamentalist arguments against the separation of church and state forget that religious beliefs are strengthened   by a separation of church and state.  Religious arguments for the separation of church and state focus on protecting true faith from corruption by political power, ensuring genuine religious freedom for all by preventing a state-favored religion (preserving voluntary worship), and upholding biblical principles that distinguish civil authority from spiritual authority, preventing the state from enforcing religious law or judging matters of belief.  Key ideas come from thinkers like John Locke and James Madison in The Federalist No. 51 and the General Defense of the Constitution, June 12 1788, saw the "multiplicity of sects" as actually strengthening religious freedom and preventing persecution by preventing any single sect from dominating and oppressing others, creating a system of checks and balances through sheer variety.

John Locke penned his influential A Letter Concerning Toleration, which advocated church-state separation as the only path toward peace. According to Locke, “it is utterly necessary that we draw a precise boundary-line between (1) the affairs of civil government and (2) the affairs of religion.” John Locke, Toleration 3 (1690) (Jonathan Bennett ed. 2010), available at http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/ assets/pdfs/locke1689b.pdf. Otherwise, there will be “no end to the controversies arising between those who have...a concern for men’s souls and those who have...a care for the commonwealth.” Id.

Similar notable authors spoke of the independence of church and state. Roger Williams was a minister, theologian, author, and founder of the Providence Plantations, which became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and later the State of Rhode Island wrote the  The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, in which he  made a two-part case for non-interference with religious affairs. “First, it was best for the state because conformity in religious matters was impossible due to its personal nature, and state attempts to compel conformity would lead only to repression and civil discord.” Carl H. Esbeck, Establishment Clause Limits on Governmental Interference with Religious Organizations, 41 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 347, 357-58 (1984)  Second, it “was best for religion because it sealed the church from co-optation by the state and left it free to pursue its mission, however perceived.” Id. at 358. These ideas spread throughout the colonies during the First Great Awakening of 1720–1750. Id. at 357. “The leaders of the movement insisted that the Church should be exalted as a spiritual and not a political institution.” Id. at 358 (internal quotation marks omitted) 

There were also official acts during the beginning of this Nation that church and state must remain separate.  After the American states gained independence, the Congress of the Confederation strongly endorsed the principle of non-interference in internal church governance. In the early 1780s, the French minister to the United States petitioned Congress to approve a Catholic Bishop for America. Carl H. Esbeck, Religion During the American Revolution and the Early Republic, in 1 Law and Religion, An Overview 57, 72–73 (Silvio Ferrari & Rinaldo Cristofori, eds. 2013). In response, Congress passed a resolution directing Benjamin Franklin (then-ambassador to France) to notify the Vatican’s representative that “the subject of [this] application...being purely spiritual[]...is without the jurisdiction and powers of Congress.” Id

As explained by the Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. Equal Emp't Opportunity Comm'n,565 U.S. 171, 132 S.Ct. 694 (2012):

It was against this background that the First Amendment was adopted. Familiar with life under the established Church of England, the founding generation sought to foreclose the possibility of a national church. See 1 Annals of Cong. 730–731 (1789) (noting that the Establishment Clause addressed the fear that "one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform" (remarks of J. Madison)). By forbidding the "establishment of religion" and guaranteeing the "free exercise thereof," the Religion Clauses ensured that the new Federal Government—unlike the English Crown—would have no role in filling ecclesiastical offices. The Establishment Clause prevents the Government from appointing ministers, and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.

This understanding of the Religion Clauses was reflected in two events involving James Madison, " ‘the leading architect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.’ " Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, 563 U.S. ––––, ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1436, 1446, 179 L.Ed.2d 523 (2011) (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 103, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968) ). The first occurred in 1806, when John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, solicited the Executive's opinion on who should be appointed to direct the affairs of the Catholic Church in the territory newly acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. After consulting with President Jefferson, then-Secretary of State Madison responded that the selection of church "functionaries" was an "entirely ecclesiastical" matter left to the Church's own judgment. Letter from James Madison to Bishop Carroll (Nov. 20, 1806), reprinted in 20 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 63 (1909). The "scrupulous policy of the Constitution in guarding against a political interference with religious affairs," Madison explained, prevented the Government from rendering an opinion on the "selection of ecclesiastical individuals." Id., at 63–64.

The second episode occurred in 1811, when Madison was President. Congress had passed a bill incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of Alexandria in what was then the District of Columbia. Madison vetoed the bill, on the ground that it "exceeds the rightful authority to which Governments are limited, by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates, in particular, the article of the Constitution of the United States, which declares, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’ " 22 Annals of Cong. 982–983 (1811). Madison explained:

"The bill enacts into, and establishes by law, sundry rules and proceedings relative purely to the organization and polity of the church incorporated, and comprehending even the election and removal of the Minister of the same ; so that no change could be made therein by the particular society, or by the general church of which it is a member, and whose authority it recognises." Id., at 983 (emphasis added). 

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. at 183-85

Thomas Jefferson is famous for stating the First Amendment built “a wall of separation between Church & State” in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.  https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html  A few years later Jefferson wrote a letter in response to a letter from the Ursuline Nuns of New Orleans in 1804. In that letter, Jefferson assured the nuns that the Louisiana Purchase—and the transfer of control from Catholic France to the United States—would not undermine their rights, including their “broad right of self-governance and religious liberty.” Kevin Pybas, Disestablishment in the Louisiana and Missouri Territories, in Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776–1833 (Carl H. Esbeck & Jonathan J. Den Hartog eds., 2019) at 281. As Jefferson explained, “[t]he principles of the [C]onstitution...are a sure guaranty to you that [your property and rights] will be preserved to you sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to it’s [sic] own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.” Id.

Importantly, the Wisconsin Constitution offers more expansive protections for freedom of conscience than those offered by the First Amendment.  Peace Lutheran Church & Academy v. Village of Sussex, 2001 WI App 139 , ¶ 14, 246 Wis. 2d 502 , 631 N.W.2d 229; State v. Miller, 202 Wis. 2d 56, 549 N.W.2d 235 (1996)