Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
An open question: The attempt to evolve a consistent philosophy of the separation of church and state in America, 1787-1987
Abstract
This work follows the attempts to define the proper relationship between church and state in the United States of America, beginning with the Constitutional period. Although it is thought to be common knowledge that Jefferson gave us a clear understanding of the separation of church and state, and that Jefferson's opinions on the matter were written into our Bill of Rights, the historical record gives a different story. Instead of a simple line of thought from Jefferson to the present day, now interpreted through the Supreme Court's pronouncements on the Establishment Clause, one finds that Jefferson lost his argument in the writing of the religion clauses of the Bill of Rights! In debating the religion clauses, the First Congress chose to allow the States to continue their very different customs of relating the secular and the sacred. The Consensus of 1789 is only that religion be left to the States, and that the State would make some use of the civilizing and socializing virtues a strong religious underpinning would give to the new nation. Religion was thought necessary in some form as a tutor of virtue, and a democracy could not long survive without a virtuous citizenry. This Consensus was operationalized through the teachings of a generalized Protestant Christianity promulgated through the tool of the public school system. This generalized Protestant Christianity was a feature of American public schools until the Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960's ruled that there should exist a "high wall of separation between church and State". The Supreme Court began its tortured way toward trying to define the Constitutionally correct relationship between church and State, and has not yet come to a consistent approach to the subject. The conclusions reached here are that the Court has misread history, and substituted its own cultural biases for the intent of the Framers. However, in a case that involves changing cultural mores, with a vast chasm between the Consensus of 1787 and modern pluralism, perhaps the intent of the Framers ought not be of utmost importance. This is an example where the Congress, not the Court, should come to a new Consensus, and define the Establishment of Religion and the separation of church and state in terms that will unify, not divide, the people.
Subject Area
Political science|Religion|Law|American history
Recommended Citation
Bauer, Monica TepLy, "An open question: The attempt to evolve a consistent philosophy of the separation of church and state in America, 1787-1987" (1989). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8925226.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8925226