Church & State

The founding fathers of the U.S. borrowed many a principle and practice of statecraft. But they made a significant innovation--a total and organic separation of church & state. Most inventions need a bit of tinkering to get them working properly, and this one was, and is, no exception, as U.S. citizens could learn in detail last week from a monumental three-volume work, Church and State in the United States (Harper; $25).

The author, the Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes, 76, has been pegging away steadily at the subject for the last 13 years. As secretary of Yale University (1899-1921) and canon of the Episcopal cathedral in Washington, D.C. (1924-39), Dr. Stokes has written and compiled several other volumes of scholarship and research. But in Church and State he has produced every scholar's dream--a definitive work.

Subversive Toleration. Dr. Stokes credits the first experiment in religious freedom to India's Buddhist King Asoka in the 3rd Century B.C. But liberal King Asoka started no popular trend. Even Plato, himself a nonconformist, recommended five years in jail for dissenters from the state religion. The persecuted Christians of the first centuries had no opportunity for anything but separation from the state. But with the coming of the Middle Ages the church adopted what Author Stokes calls the "Ecclesiastical Domination plan," which reached its height with Emperor Henry IV's famed barefoot repentance before Pope Gregory VII at Canossa.

The seeds of religious liberty were sown by the leaders of the Reformation, says Historian Stokes, though he credits neither Luther nor Calvin with any inclination to practice it themselves. It was rather the radical fringe of Protestantism--the Anabaptists, Mennonites and Quakers--whose protests against ecclesiastical institutionalism and state control of conscience began to lay the groundwork for religious liberty as it is known today. Though the Puritans came to the New World in search of religious freedom, they were not interested in tolerance for anyone else. Typical of 17th Century New England, says Stokes, is a couplet found in the pocket of Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley after his death:

Let men of God in court and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch.

Diplomatic Relations. In the pre-Revolutionary period, according to Author Stokes, religious liberty in America received its chief impetus from such men as Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, Roman Catholic founder of Maryland, from Baptist John Clarke, sometimes called the "Father of Rhode Island," and from Quaker William Penn of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Stokes gives no aid & comfort to those who would interpret the U.S. Constitution as a blueprint for a secularist society. Over & over again, he stresses the basically religious--and Christian--premises of the founding fathers. Even Benjamin Franklin, considered the most skeptical, urged at the Federal Convention in 1787 that each session begin with prayer. "I have lived, Sir, a long time," he said, "and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

Dr. Stokes presents detailed accounts of the background of controversies that are still making news. The question of a U.S. diplomatic representative at the Vatican first came up in 1779, when John Adams wrote the Continental Congress that he hoped it would "never send a minister to His Holiness," nor receive a Roman Catholic nuncio in the U.S. But when Pius IX was elected Pope in 1846, his reputation for liberalism made U.S. Protestants so enthusiastic that the event was celebrated with nondenominational mass meetings in New York and Philadelphia.

President Polk recommended the appointment to Congress, and the House, with only two Catholics in its membership, passed it 137 to 15. The Senate followed suit, 36 to 7. For 20 years (1848-67) the U.S. maintained a Minister to the Papal States, but the mission was discontinued largely because of difficulty in arranging for U.S. Protestant members to worship within the walls of the Holy City.

Two Defects. Stokes devotes 14 pages to last year's controversy between Cardinal Spellman and Mrs. Roosevelt. He says that the Cardinal's final statement limiting the Roman Catholic request to "auxiliary aids" for parochial schools, e.g., bus transportation, free lunches, medical care, was "of epoch-making importance as far as church-state relations in the United States are concerned. It was the first time that the hierarchy, represented by one of its most prominent members . . . recognized publicly that direct aid for the support of parochial schools was . . . unconstitutional."

Stokes sums up the case as "a most interesting and illuminating public discussion, the general results of which should prove of benefit to the country, even though many non-Catholics may differ on the question of auxiliary aids, and many Catholics may regret that the Cardinal yielded on the matter of direct aid to parochial schools."

The U.S. separation of state & church, Historian Stokes believes, has been beneficial both to the U.S. practice of religion and to the body politic. But he concludes that there are two defects in the system: "The failure up to the present time to work out any satisfactory constitutional plan for providing a broad basis for religious education for pupils of our public schools; and the tendency to encourage a multitude of weak sects with all the evils of extreme denominationalism."

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