
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 12, 1994                   TAG: 9410210002
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WILLIAM WINN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MIXING RELIGION AND POLITICS IS DANGEROUS TO BOTH

THE CURRENT debates over proposals favoring tuition tax credits, allowing prayers in public schools, calling for the teaching of biblical creation, and setting forth an essentially religious interpretation of abortion bear a similarity to a debate that was taking place in the Virginia assembly 200 years ago. The underlying question then, too, was whether government should be the champion of religion or be neutral in matters related to religion.

In the 1780s, Virginians were trying to decide whether to enact a tax for the support of Christianity in the state. The chief antagonists were Patrick Henry and James Madison. Henry declared that nations decay when religion officially was neglected and that passage of the tax bill was essential to the morals of the people. Madison, who already had introduced religious liberty into Virginia's Bill of Rights, countered that such a tax would serve neither the state nor religion.

Proponents gained support for their plan by rewriting their bill so that all Christian groups would gain aid and by changing its label so that it was "for teachers of the Christian religion." In the House Committee of the Whole, the bill easily passed by a vote of 47 to 32, and it appeared that it easily would get final approval when it reached the floor.

Madison corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, about how to deal with Patrick Henry. Jefferson, who held a low opinion of Henry as a thinker, replied that "what we can do, I think, is devotedly to pray for his death."

The solution that Madison and his allies chose was less drastic, but quite effective. They maneuvered to get Henry out of the assembly that he dominated and into the Virginia governorship. The elevation got rid of the leader of the opposition and gave Madison the time he needed to lobby against the tax bill.

He then proceeded to write "Memorial and Remonstrance," a powerful plea against any tax of any kind for the support of religion. The proposed bill, he said, would have the effect of doing the very opposite of what it was intended to do. It would corrupt and handicap religion rather than promote it. "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion have had a contrary operation." Christianity had flourished most in the periods when it had no public support whatsoever. Enactment of the tax too would be a first step toward the loss of more freedoms. He called the plan a form of "spiritual tyranny."

The influence of Madison's tract and the absence of Henry from the house served to kill the tax bill. The assembly, in fact, didn't even bother to vote it down. Madison was so encouraged by this victory that he moved on to get enacted the quite different bill that Jefferson had been unable to get passed nine years previously. That was the landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. Madison said that "lest more rights be filched" it is "proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties."

That warning is appropriate to the many present attempts to weaken the wall of separation between church and government. Madison would be alarmed, indeed, by current efforts to have religious objectives served by government.

The projection of religion into the political process not only threatens religion. It represents a fundamental misunderstanding of democratic politics in a free society. Power is converted into principle. Religion has to do with ultimate truth. Its model is perfection. The ideal of a community of perfection takes the place of a community of self-interest.

Politics is something quite different. It has to do with compromise rather than with perfection. Government, said Edmund Burke, "is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that we may enjoy others." Politics has to do with conflict and ambiguity. It is a means-end relationship. Disagreement is a presupposition.

The politics of truth or of God is dangerous. The conviction of divine sanction brings forth aberrations of all sorts. Much of the conflict in the world today arises from this misunderstanding. In Bosnia, Orthodox fight Catholics; both fight Islam.

Madison himself was a religious person. As a student at Princeton he considered becoming a Christian minister. Nevertheless, he would have agreed with Max Weber that "he who seeks the salvation of souls, his own as well as others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics."

William Winn of Martinsville is a former religion professor and past president of the North Carolina Consumers Council.

by CNB