Separation of Church and State

* It seems that Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona is unhappy with modern interpretations of Thomas Jefferson’s famous metaphor concerning the relation that should exist between church and state in a free society (Commentary, July 10). While Kyl is entitled to be unhappy, his happiness or lack thereof should not blind him to the clear import of Jefferson’s words.

There is a clear, hard meaning behind Jefferson’s famous phrase. Nowhere in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists is there anything that would lead one to believe that Jefferson stood for some kind of wishy-washy, permeable barrier, one that would allow the state to influence in any sense whatsoever the spiritual life of its citizens. The barrier that Jefferson wrote of is as absolute as was his belief that in a general way, the state had no business dealing with the internal or external spiritual life of its citizens.

One wonders, what part of the phrase “wall of separation” does Kyl not understand? The meaning of the word “wall” is clear. The meaning of the word “separation” is clear. Those two words have the same meaning today as they did in 1802. If the meaning of the phrase itself does not refer to keeping two separate elements of human life (the temporal/political and the spiritual/internal) separate, what can it then mean?

It is clear, at least to me, that “wall” means wall and “separation” means separation. Jefferson was not a man given over to expressing misleading metaphors, and he certainly did not mean to mislead the Baptists of Danbury or anyone else as to his meaning.

CARL W. GOSS

Los Angeles

*

* Kyl errs when he states that secularists rely on Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” to determine the proper role of religion in our society. What we refer to is the 1st Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Contrary to what Kyl believes, the public realm has not been vacuumed clean of expressions of faith. That would be unconstitutional. What our government has assured us is that one religion will not be put on prominent display over others.

RUSSELL GECK

Glendale