The vital task of patrolling the wall of separation between church and state, America’s best idea, has enlisted some unlikely allies over the years. Although the motives animating some of those measures can undoubtedly be called into question, those contributions have nevertheless been crucial.
Consider the Blaine amendments of the nineteenth century and the Johnson Amendment in the twentieth century.
Though born in Pennsylvania, James G. Blaine made his mark in Maine, first as a newspaperman with the Kennebec Journal and then the Portland Daily Advertiser, and then later as a politician. He was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1858 as a Republican and won a seat in Congress in 1862. His colleagues elected him speaker of the House of Representatives in 1869 and in 1875, he proposed an amendment to the Constitution.
The so-called Blaine amendment stipulated that “no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”
The amendment passed the House but fell short in the Senate. Even so, thirty-seven states adopted some form of the Blaine amendment forbidding the use of taxpayer funds for religious schools.
All well and good. The Blaine amendments reinforced a clear demarcation between church and state, thereby shoring up the establishment clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion…”
The less savory dimensions of the Blaine amendments lay in the motivation behind them. They were directed against Roman Catholics, specifically against public support for parochial schools.
Equally specious in its origins was the Johnson Amendment. In 1948, Lyndon Johnson had won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate (then tantamount to election) by fewer than a hundred votes—and those votes very likely were stolen. (When he arrived in the Senate, he was known as “Landslide Lyndon.”)
When Johnson faced reelection in 1954, various conservatives in Texas who deemed Johnson too liberal, were using nonprofit organizations to work for his defeat. Johnson wanted to hold them at bay, so he introduced the Johnson Amendment to the Internal Revenue Service Code, prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from making endorsements for or against political candidates. Congress approved the Johnson Amendment, and Dwight Eisenhower signed the IRS code, including the Johnson Amendment, into law.
Johnson was clearly acting out of self-interest, but that does not diminish the importance of the principle that tax-exempt organizations should not be engaging in partisan politics. Why should taxpayers be forced to subsidize political activities?
Despite the questionable motives behind both the Blaine amendments and the Johnson Amendment, they helped to fortify the wall of separation between church and state. For decades, these principles—no taxpayer support for religious schools and no candidate endorsements for tax-exempt organizations—have shored up the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Now, sadly, both principles are under siege, the first by a Supreme Court majority with little regard for the First Amendment (though they love the Second Amendment) and the second by the IRS and the Trump administration.
Beginning with his first run for the presidency in 2016, Trump has promised to undermine the Johnson Amendment, and he has sought to do so with various executive orders. More recently, the IRS, which has always been lax about enforcing the Johnson Amendment, issued a directive allowing preachers to endorse political candidates.
Undermining the principle that taxpayers should not support religious education is arguably a more serious matter. For more than a century, this has been a bright line separating church and state.
Enabled by misbegotten Supreme Court rulings, Republican supermajorities in states like Florida, Oklahoma and Iowa have implemented voucher programs that effectively pay parents to send their children to private and religious schools.
The separation of church and state, America’s best idea, has shielded the government from religious contestation. It has also protected the integrity of the faith from too close an association with the state.
Despite the less-than-savory origins of both the Blaine amendments and the Johnson Amendment—the anti-Catholic motivations of the former and Johnson’s self-interest in the latter—they have served as essential reinforcements in the wall of separation. For anyone who cares about the future of both the church and the nation, those principles are worth defending.
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An Episcopal priest, Balmer is John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College and the author of more than a dozen books, with commentaries appearing in newspapers across the country. He is a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
