By Jeff Wehr

House Speaker John Boehner plans to push for the subsidizing of religious schools in the District of Columbia. While some would question the timing of such a plan with the current federal budget deficit, there is a bigger concern. Is such a proposal even constitutional? Should Americans be taxed to support religious institutions? According to the primary author of our American Constitution, James Madison, the answer is clearly, “No.”

In February of 1811, James Madison, fourth president of the United States, had to deal with such a bill, a proposed legislation that contained sections detailing how a certain Episcopal church was to be organized to help the disadvantaged and to offer schooling to poor children.

Madison wrote, “The bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited, by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates, in particular, the article of the Constitution of the United States, which declares, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’”

Madison did not believe that churches need permission from the government to help the poor or to educate poor children. Churches are free to do these things with private donations. Religious establishments are not to be set up by the civil government, but by religious bodies. Therefore, public funds were not to aid the church to do what the church already had the freedom to do.

The majority in the House of Representatives saw the wisdom of Madison’s actions and upheld the veto by a vote of 79-21. This vote shows that 79 members believed in the separation of church and state. But there were 21 who disagreed with Madison’s veto of the bill.

A month later, on March 2, 1811, Madison vetoed a House bill granting a plot of federal land to a Baptist church in Mississippi. He told Congress the bill “comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the articles of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’”

The majority of the House voted 55-33 in agreement with Madison’s veto. Madison believed in the total separation of church and state. There were those who did not. But the majority of our Founding Fathers, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, firmly supported the complete separation of church and state.

In the book, The Great Controversy, a time is foretold when the civil government would not only support Sunday legislation, but also financially support the institutions of the church.

“When the leading churches of the United States, uniting upon such points of doctrine as are held by them in common, shall influence the state to enforce their decrees and to sustain their institutions, then Protestant America will have formed an image to the Roman hierarchy, and the infliction of civil penalties upon dissenters will inevitably result.” GC, 445

by Jeff Wehr