When President Bush praised the new Iraqi constitution as protecting the rights of minorities and women and forming the basis of a "free society," he was glossing over the document's rejection by Sunnis—divisive language that may well lead to its defeat in a coming referendum—and the worries of women and minority groups in Iraq that, in fact, the document sets up an oppressive Islamic theocracy.
Shiite religious parties who helped draft the constitution saw to it that, despite assurances of religious and individual freedom, Islam will be the official religion of Iraq and "a main source of legislation," according to the New York Times. "Clerics would more than likely sit on the Supreme Court, and judges would have broad latitude to strike down legislation that conflicted with the religion."
In addition, "Clerics would be given a broad, new role in adjudication of family disputes like marriage, divorce, and inheritance." So much for women's rights.
The failure of American efforts to transform Iraq into a free society comes at a time when we are experiencing a crisis in our own country over the basic concepts of freedom, democracy, and the separation of church and state.
Recently, while I was in Washington, I heard a young conservative woman assert that there is "no such thing" as the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution.
Senator Rick Santorum, the family-values, anti-abortion crusader in the Senate, makes the same assertion in his new book, It Takes a Family. Various web pages echo this claim, supposedly debunking the secular myth of church/state separation in this country. The principle of a wall of separation between religion and government in the United States is one of those ideas so familiar it comes as a bit of a shock to hear it denied.
We all learned about church/state separation in civics class, but can we dredge up the relevant citations on demand? Can you prove, for that matter, that the Earth revolves around the Sun? Better start dusting off those old high school textbooks (before the new, expurgated versions come out).
Here to help you is a website that delves into the history and proof of church/state separation in America.
It includes a handy guide to the arguments against (that there's no Establishment Clause in the Constitution, that Thomas Jefferson didn't really mean it when he wrote his famous letter about a "wall of separation,” that the wall is more of a one-way valve, meant to keep the government from meddling in religion but not vice versa, etc. etc.).
The new theocrats make much of the fact that the actual words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the Constitution. (But then neither do the words "religious liberty" or "fair trial," counters Leo Pfeffer, as cited on the pro-separation home page cited above.) The framers' intent is very clear.
The actual language about a wall of separation come from Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, written in 1802: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
Just in case you forgot where in the Constitution you can find the principle of separation of church and state, here it is, the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."
For people who argue that just because (unlike the Iraqi constitution) the United States of America prohibits the imposition of a state religion, that doesn't mean our government is not meant to derive its ultimate legitimacy from God, there is Article VI, Section III: ". . . but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
The no-religious-test clause was something completely new when it was adopted by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Not only is one religion not elevated over another in selecting candidates for public office, but belief in God of any kind is not to be favored over nonbelief.
Unlike other legal documents of the time, the Constitution omits any reference to God, a Deity, a Creator, or Providence. That is no accident. From the beginning, our country was founded on a radical notion of individual human freedom. Freedom from religious and political persecution was at the front of the founders' minds. That is why they wisely chose to separate God from government.
The hollow rhetoric of the Bush Administration, from "operation Iraqi freedom" to the commingling of evangelical Christianity with the idea of an American mission to spread democracy around the globe, is a betrayal of those founding ideals. The new theocrats like to invoke a kind of phony traditionalism, based on nostalgia, when they argue that the founding fathers support their own, revisionist idea of American history and America's place in the world. But nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, this Administration is continually violating the founders' vision of America, whether it is taking war-making powers from Congress and improperly bestowing them on the President, spying on American citizens to thwart a vague and amorphous terrorist threat, chilling free speech with threatening language about national security, or declaring that America is a Christian nation with a mission to bring its philosophy, at gunpoint, to the rest of the world. Defending the real core values of America has never been more important.