Are church and state at odds or bedfellows? Many modern historians, politicians and others would have you believe that church and state do not go together and that this is a cornerstone of American history. One of the requirements of historical research is to go back and look at the fact without clouding up the past with modern assumptions. Although many of us were taught that separating church and state was a founding principle of this nation, history suggests otherwise. Jasper Adams, an American clergyman who also served as president of the College of Charleston in the early nineteenth century, believed otherwise.
Adams was reacting to a “destabilizing secular drift in American culture.”[1] Adams was writing in response to an 1831 decision by the state of Massachusetts to end its affiliation with the Congregational Church, an affiliation that had existed since the colony’s founding. In his most well known sermon, Adams wasted no time proclaiming that Christianity was designed by the “Divine Author” and that we know it will eventually come to serve all people.[2] Adams sermon assumes the existence of God and the supremacy of Christianity. Two things which we don’t assume today. Adams, however, points out that governments had been relying on the relationship with Christianity since the time of Constantine.[3] In the 1830s, Adams was concerned that Americans understand that the intention of state governments was not to reject Christianity, but rather to reject direct affiliation with a particular strain or sect of Christianity over all others.[4]
Adams went on to point out that the English colonies were established in great part to “propagate” Christianity, not to secularize the world. In fact, nearly every founding document including the constitutions of Vermont and Massachusetts identify Christianity as the cornerstone of our society and at once crucial to our existence.[5] In fact despite, nowhere in the founding of our earliest universities and settlements is Christianity absent. Adams is writing in response to a Jacksonian wave of secularization. The purpose of the sermon was partially to warn us that by rejecting ties to specific denominations, we could potentially see a rejection of Christianity as a whole in its role in relation to government. Although this was clearly not what was intended at the time, Adams warning has come to fruition.
Next time someone declares the separation of church and state as a founding principle of our Republic, you might direct them to some of our founding documents and to the works of Jasper Adams for a review of the facts.
[1] Daniel L. Dreisbach. “Introduction: A Debate on Religion and Politics in the Early Republic.” In Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate, P. 3.
[2] Jasper Adams, et al. The relation of Christianity to civil government in the United States : a sermon preached in St. Michael's Church, Charleston, February 13th, 1833, before the convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of South-Carolina:. Printed by A.E. Miller, 1833. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, P. 2.
[3] Ibid. P. 3-6.
[4] Ibid, P.
[5] Ibid, P. 12.
Sources:
Adams, Jasper, et al. The relation of Christianity to civil government in the United States : a sermon preached in St. Michael's Church, Charleston, February 13th, 1833, before the convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of South-Carolina:. Printed by A.E. Miller, 1833. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0102787302/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=56b30359&pg=3. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Dreisbach, Daniel L., ed. “Introduction: A Debate on Religion and Politics in the Early Republic.” In Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate, 1–36. University Press of Kentucky, 1996. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jpcx.6.an
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