By Mark Waters

I am an avid supporter of the First Amendment including the separation of church and state. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” A state sponsored church would be an example of “an establishment of religion” as would the implementation of theocratic governmental policies. These examples also constitute “preventing the free exercise thereof.” A teacher leading prayer in a public school classroom impinges on the “free exercise” of students whose faith or family’s faith differs from that of the teacher. Teachers are free to pray all they want outside of that role.  

Church and state should be separated by Thomas Jefferson’s metaphorical wall. In 1802, Jefferson reassured the people of the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in a letter saying, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” 

Nonetheless, the separation of church and state is not necessarily the same as the separation of religion and politics. I get annoyed when people conflate these two categories and their frequent conclusion that faith is only a private matter. My claim, which I hope to demonstrate below, is that persons of faith can enthusiastically support the separation of church and state while, simultaneously, mixing religion and politics. 

The Greek word polis means city or community. It intersects public life implied in a broad sense by Greek understandings of city and community. After all, their polis was the city-state—the organization of public life. Polis reflects the communal nature of human interaction and policy. Religion, like politics, is inherently communal. Indeed, one way to distinguish between religion and spirituality is that spirituality can be private whereas religion involves communal interaction. 

I teach religions of the world in addition to theology. I cannot think of any religion, including my own Christianity, that does not involve interaction with, and ethical influence upon, public life. “Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). “Do what is just and right…Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner” (Jeremiah 22:3). “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25: 34-40).  

These verses and others belie the myth that religion should remain a private matter. Christian ethics are political as are the core ethical standards of most if not all faith traditions. Religious people attempting to influence the government with their ethical convictions does not, in and of itself, trespass the establishment clause. I recognize that religious influence is unfathomably messy in light of the fact that people in the same religion (as well as across faith traditions) have very different opinions about what is ethical or moral. But that is a different issue outside the scope of this article. 

Of course, zealous folks may inappropriately, even illegally, cross the church-state line by misusing instruments of government such as electoral manipulation or by working within explicitly governmental processes to prop-up one’s own religion while limiting the free exercise of someone else’s. The most prominent contemporary example is the theocratic intent of White Christian Nationalism. But the unconstitutional extremes of zeal do not invalidate the legitimacy of religious influence in the public square. Any religion worth its salt is more than a private matter. Indeed, the political influence of non-extremist religious groups is a crucial component of countering White Christian Nationalism and the related Seven Mountain Mandate. 

I am not claiming that non-extremist mixing of religion and politics is easy. In fact, it is terribly complex. This mixing requires careful critical thinking, a learning outcome on multitudes of college syllabi and in university mission statements. Failure to think critically about these things has real life consequences. These consequences span extremes from attempts to create a theocracy in the name of “freedom of [my] religion,” to uncritically accepting the false narrative that the founding fathers intended to create a “Christian nation,” to the false belief that faithful folks have no right to impact public policy based on their faith convictions. In other words, unlike mixing church and state, there is nothing inherently wrong with mixing religion and politics. Problems arise when we don’t think critically about how we mix these two social phenomena. (I recognize, of course, that some people do think critically, understand everything I’ve claimed, and simply don’t care about the consequences.) 

Second, critical thinking about these matters discloses that, in some cases, mixing religion and politics yields pathological “certainty.” Positions in both realms can become exceedingly rigid and exclusive. Every tyrant is “certain” about the reasons that their will should be enacted or forced. Time after time, mixing religion or politics with illusions of certainty is damaging to individuals and society. Referring to Auschwitz, Scientist and Philosopher Jacob Bronowski wrote, “When people believe that they have absolute knowledge (certainty)…this is how they behave. This is what [people] do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”* The problem is not mixing religion and politics per se. It is inevitably problematic, however, to do so with arrogant certainty.  

I’ve saved the following quote for over thirty years to remind myself of the dangers of certainty. The words also remind me not to fret when lacking certainty. Dr. Browning Ware (1928-2002), the author of the quote, was the pastor of First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, from 1973-1996. He penned these words sometime in the late ’80s or early ’90s.  

“When younger, I thought there was an answer to every problem. And for a time, I knew many of the answers. I knew about parenting until I had children. I knew about divorce until I got one. I knew about suicide until three of my closest friends took their lives in the same year. I knew about the death of a child until my child died. I’m not as impressed with answers as once I was. Answers seem so pallid, sucked dry of blood and void of life. Knowing answers seduces us into making pronouncements. I still have a few friends or acquaintances who are 100 percent sure on most anything, and are ready to make pronouncements on homosexuality, AIDS, marriage problems, teen-age pregnancies, abortion, sex education or whatever is coming down the pike. But when we get shoved into our valley of the shadow, a pronouncement is the last thing we need. A friend wrote recently, ‘I, too, get Maalox** moments from all who know. I’m discovering that wisdom and adversity replace cocksure ignorance with thoughtful uncertainty.’ More important and satisfying than answers is the Answer. “Thou art with me” – that’s what we crave. There may or may not be answers, but the Eternal One would like very much to be our companion.”  

My use of this quote is not a suggestion that we give up on finding answers or solving problems. I am asserting that prideful certainty—which easily collapses into cocksure ignorance—weaponizes both politics and religion in ways that damage individuals, institutions, and societies. We would do well to exercise humility and careful critical thinking in every aspect of life, particularly in all things political and religious. 

*Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 353.  
**A “Maalox moment” represented the indigestion (actual or metaphorical) one might get from something distasteful. It was a Maalox television ad campaign that caught on in popular language. 

(The claims in this article are mine. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.)
Mark Waters is professor of religion at McMurry University and chair of the Division of Humanities, Religion, and Social Sciences