Separating church, state

While it is true early immigrants were fleeing religious persecution, most of us are descendants of immigrants who left their native countries for reasons totally unrelated to religion. Mine were refugees from wars and the lure of economic opportunities.

Relatively few of us can trace our ancestry back to that handful of Calvinists who established footholds in New England in the early1600s. We have chosen to forget that religious freedom was never an objective of those immigrants. They proved to be as intolerant of religious dissent as was what they fled.

The Draconian punishments they meted out to dissenters, nonconformists and nonbelievers are well-documented. Church and state were indistinguishable.

It can be argued our Constitution was a reaction against the intolerance and lack of political freedom that typified these early colonial settlements. Had our Founding Fathers wished to create a government in which church and state were intermingled, they had opportunity to do so when drafting our Constitution. They did not do so, nor is there evidence such a relationship was ever considered.

One finds no reference to Christianity, Christian state, Christian God, or for that matter, any divinity in that document. While guaranteeing religious freedom, it further stipulates there is to be no religious test as a qualification for public office, and there is to be no state-sponsored religion.

It can also be argued it was the seminal concept of a separation of church and state that made our government unique among governments in the world, and will stand as our most important contribution to governance.

Robert Hoffman

Santa Maria