Public Religious Acknowledgments Part Two by David Barton

State and become the head in each, Uzziah had crossed an institutional line established by God Himself. Therefore, when he took the priest’s sacred utensils and prepared to make use of them, God sovereignly weighed in and instantly struck Uzziah with leprosy. It had been acceptable for Uzziah to honor God in his kingdom, and it had been acceptable for Uzziah to enter the temple to worship God; but when he attempted to violate the jurisdictional separation between State and Church – when he sought to be in charge of both the civil and religious arenas at the same time – God provided a dramatic message of His disapproval.

Episcopal Bishop correctly acknowledged:

Christ and Caesar are at peace, but their kingdoms are independent. They cooperate but should never unite.
But Americans also understood that an institutional separation did not require a public secularization. As early national Quaker leader Will Wood (1797-1877) affirmed:

The separation of Church and State does not mean the exclusion of God, righteousness, morality, from the State.

Early American Bishop Charles Galloway agreed, noting that:

The separation of the Church from the State did not mean the severance of the State from God.
The U. S. Supreme Court long upheld a policy of government cooperation with religious expressions and activities – as in its 1952 decision affirming:

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. . . . Otherwise the State and religion would be aliens to each other – hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. . . . When the State encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. . . . We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.

Regrettably, the once clear institutional separation of Church and State has now been subverted into a militant policy of civic secularization, thus depriving America of the positive benefits it long experienced from the public acknowledgment of God. As James Adams (an editor of the Cincinnati Post) correctly noted:

The Founding Fathers called only for separation, not divorce. Only in the latter half of [the twentieth] century has the United States Supreme Court held that Church and State should be legally divorced. . . . To require religion to stand mute in any public debate deprives the nation of a voice that needs to be heard. We dare not muzzle morality in the marketplace or permit the wall of separation to turn into an Iron Curtain of religious repression.