One of the disturbing characteristics of the Christian Right’s approach to the separation of church and state is the blatant hypocrisy. They are quick to promote the separation of church and state when it comes to exempting their religious groups from government-imposed standards or oversight, but they decry separation when it is used to object to government funding of those same religious groups. They can’t have it both ways, though.
- Religious teaching cannot be a private affair when the state seeks to impose regulations which infringe on it and contrary-wise, a public affair when it comes to taxing citizens of one faith to aid another or those of no faith to aid all.
- R. Lawrence Siegel, quoted in One Woman’s Fight, by Vashti Cromwell McCollum (1951).
Part of the problem is the growing belief among Christians that there cannot be any real government neutrality when it comes to religion — that government must always favor one religion over others and, therefore, it might as well be their religion that is favored because it’s the only true religion anyway. Even if we grant the fact that no human institution is perfect and, therefore, neutrality will never be quite perfect, it doesn’t follow that neutrality can’t exist at all and that government will always favor religion somehow.
This belief is pushed by Christian Reconstructionists because they intend for their religion to be endorsed, promoted, and established by the government — they don’t approve of the constitutional prohibition of established religions, but they cannot eliminate this all at once. The job must be accomplished a step at a time and the first is to get people to believe the lie that government neutrality is impossible. The second is to get people to believe the lie that atheism, humanism, and secularism are religions which are favored by the government when Christianity isn’t privileged.
Christian Reconstructionists want to tax people to aid their faith — people may object, but Christian Reconstructionists would also deny them the right to protest and fight for different laws. Christian Reconstructionists don’t believe in equality or liberty for all, they only believe in enforcing their vision of True Christianity. This is why they can live with the hypocrisy: for them, it isn’t really hypocrisy because state interference in others’ religion will be a natural and welcome outcome of their policies.
When religion is transformed into a public matter — where “public” means a subject of government activity — there is no way that government will not interfere with people’s religious liberty. Some Christians imagine that religion can be made “public” in only a limited sense that includes just a few things, like public funding without public accountability or becoming the basis or public policy without being supported by the whole public. They don’t imagine that the government would then acquire the authority and power to regulate religion just like it regulates other aspects of the public sector — but there is no avoiding this in the long run.
Unfortunately, most Christians don’t understand that this agenda exists or that it is a driving ideological force in the Christian Right. They are led to accept a few basic principles, like the idea that the separation of church and state only works in one direction (protecting religion from state interference, but not the other way around). Then, over time, they can be brought to accept the more radical message against basic religious liberty and civil rights.
Everyone loses when Christian Reconstructionists acquire power, but the first people to lose will be atheists and religious minorities — people who are generally thought poorly of already, so too few Christians will care when their civil rights and religious liberty are infringed upon. They may not realize until its too late that Christian Reconstructionism will take away their rights, too, because Reconstructionists only care about a very narrow, conservative, fundamentalist vision of Christianity.
Christian Reconstructionism is a religious ideology built upon extremism, dedicated to oppression, and driven by lies. It slips by most people without being recognized or noticed and, probably because of this, it’s principles have become common currency with many Christians who don’t consciously think of themselves as Reconstructionists — at least, not yet.
