Denis Lacorne: Breaking Down the Wall of Separation from JFK to Santorum and Romney

“Excessive or opportunistic professions of faith can only damage the political process when the truth is distorted in the name of religion to the point of absurdity.”—Denis Lacorne

Denis Lacorne, Religion in America: A Political HistoryRecent news about the Republican primary has seen its fair share of discussion on the role of religion in public life. Of course, most prominently there was Rick Santorum’s “throw up” remark regarding John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to ministers in Houston regarding how his Catholicism would and would not shape his decisions as President. However, as Denis Lacorne, author of Religion in America: A Political History, argues in a recent essay in Huffington Post, Romney and Gingrich have also put forth positions regarding the separation of church and state that reflect a dubious understanding of the constitution.

Referring to a speech Romney gave last October, Lacorne concludes that Romney sees that “there should be no real separation between church and state.” Lacorne also suggests that it seems as if Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich feel obliged to take on the Republican’s “Southern Strategy” by adopting the viewpoints of Southern fundamentalist Protestants.

Needless to say, Lacorne sees a real danger. He writes:

This reversal of viewpoints on the role of religion in politics, from Kennedy’s Houston speech to the present position defended by the Republican candidates, points to the danger of calling into question the existence of a wall of separation between church and state. If politics cannot be separated from religion, the political debate about the common good and the future of the U.S. democracy is likely to turn into an endless scholastic babble about abortion, contraception, prenatal testing, fertilization treatments and “aspirin between the knees” as a form of abstinence. In attacking the Obama’s administration decision to require faith-based institutions to cover the cost of contraception (before Obama’s “compromise”), conservatives, Republican candidates and Republican Congressional leaders made it a constitutional issue: Obama had violated the “Free Exercise clause” of the First Amendment, concerning freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. But conservative Republicans forget that the First amendment has a dual purpose: it also prohibits support for an official or privileged religion as stated in the “Establishment clause.” The tension between the two clauses of the First Amendment is far from being resolved and Justices of the Supreme Court are still struggling with this dilemma.

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