Church and State

Early Years

During the colonial period in American history, church and state were united. Though the colonists came to America seeking religious freedom, their form of government only provided rights to those [Page 127]who practiced the state religion. In New England, the fundamental law was the Bible. In the South, the church was different, Anglican, but the practices were similar. The state enforced financial support for the established church. It gave moral and legal support to doctrines of worship resulting in no freedom of worship. Other colonies had more liberal practices.

As the United States developed after the Revolutionary War, the founders had to reconcile these opposing thoughts and traditions as they brought about the separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson advocated religious freedom in his “Bill for Religious Freedom,” which was enacted by the Virginia legislature in 1786. The First Amendment to the newly enacted Constitution calls for a separation of church and state and states that Congress cannot legislate the establishment of religion or limit its practice. Subsequently, the First Amendment became the basis for many Supreme Court decisions regarding the relationship of church, state, and schools.

The church's influence on education continued in the early part of the National Period, which began in 1789. The number of churches rose, as did the number of different religious groups and denominations. This movement was happening as the state legislatures were moving to separate from the church's influence. There was a lot of discussion about the relationship between the church and the state and the support of disestablishment. In 1833, Massachusetts became the last state to disestablish religion.

The common school movement began in the first part of the nineteenth century. The common school, a school that was publicly supported and controlled, was to be the place to bring students of different backgrounds together to provide a type of “melting pot” for different religious groups. As the common school movement grew and prospered, and as the numbers of Catholic immigrants increased, the Catholic bishops began to be concerned about what they called secularism in the schools. The number of Catholics increased from 1789, the time of the appointment of Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in America, to 1884 when the Third Plenary Council of Bishops mandated the establishment of Catholic schools.

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