Last year Clifford Goldstein wrote cryptically, "After 18 years, in which I read myself out of almost everything I ever believed about religious liberty, I left my position as Liberty editor." Allowing for characteristic hyperbole, one can find at least part of Goldstein's answer in his 1996 book, One Nation Under God? which contained several concepts that vary with Adventist popular understandings.

For example, alluding to the adage "You can't legislate morality," One Nation states: "The idea that you can't legislate morality is ludicrous. Morality is always legislated. It is one of the few things that ever is legislated. Legislation doesn't change character, only behavior, but that's all it's meant to do...in every society, religion shapes morals, and morals shape laws."

After growing up with my own set of views on religious liberties, my own epiphany came in 1970 when I began taking graduate classes in constitutional law at Portland State University. This came at a time when the Federal Courts had been breaking new ground under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Professors and students were enjoying studying court cases that indicated a willingness by the justices to strike out in new directions and make decisions that affected many different segments of society. Some read Liberty magazine and appreciated the magazine. In the liberal climate there was wide support for expanding interpretations of the Bill of Rights.

However, I was in for a surprise. Basic to understanding the Bill of Rights, its history and enforcement, was a fact that surprised many PSU students and that others still don't know about. This misunderstanding accounts for much of the confusion that seems to crop up in Adventist publications and in conversations and in the pulpit. Simply put, the Bill of Rights was not written to apply to states and did not apply to the states, until many decades of national history had passed. In fact, some provisions of the Bill of Rights still have never been enforced upon the states.

Although my liberal PSU friends were pleased that the Federal Courts were issuing decisions that changed the way government dealt with religion, they recognized that this was new ground the Supreme Court was plowing. It was readily apparent to me that my concepts of traditions of "separation of church and state" were mostly that-traditional understandings.

How did these confusions begin? As noted, the Bill of Rights originally applied only to the national government. However, the basis for change came after the American Civil War, in 1868. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities [italics supplied] of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This amendment was designed to protect freed slaves from a wide variety of abuses that sprang up following the demise of slavery.* What were "privileges and immunities"? In 1925, the court began the "process" of "nationalizing" the Bill of Rights by using them as tests of constitutionality. This process has not been completed even today.

In Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), the Court applied the "free exercise of religion" clause of the first amendment by striking down a state law that required a license to solicit funds for a religious cause. In the 1947 case Everson v. The Board of Education the Court upheld the "establishment clause"** of the first amendment as enforceable upon the states. This case also quoted Thomas Jefferson, noting his referral to the separation of church and state. The following 56 years have brought a welter of decisions-allowing Sunday laws [if they were nonreligious in intent], banning religious symbols such as Christmas crèches, crosses, and the Ten Commandments on government property, and splitting hairs on whether aid to parochial schools was "establishing" religion or merely aiding education in general.

I soon realized that most states had "Blue Laws" upholding Sunday observance; public schools had very commonly provided or allowed prayer in schools, at graduations, and, dare we say it, football games. In fact, as a lifelong reader of Ellen White, I cannot remember a single warning about danger to religious freedom to be seen in school prayers, religious symbols on government property, or common levels of promotion of Christian morality by public officials, including teachers. In her day, of course, many if not most school districts required teachers to be Christian. Her promotion of prohibition [the outlawing the sale of alcohol] was in large part based upon moral grounds.

Some may immediately say, "Times have changed." Of course. But that is irrelevant to the point we are making here. The separation of church and state policies that have emerged in the past 56 years are recent creations and should not be seen as part of "an established tradition of separation of church and state." Further, perhaps we should stay calm and speak more wisely as the Supreme Court appears to do some backtracking on church-state questions.

"A page of history, a measure of common sense, is worth a book of logic." Logically, banning of God from the school pledge when recited in school fits with the absolutist reasoning of some establishment clause interpretations. Similarly, allowing kittens to be "sacrificed" in a religious ritual is no worse than killing chickens for KFC. Most Americans, and probably most Adventists, find absolute logic more dangerous than a weighing and balancing that permits some intellectual inconsistencies.

Whatever the outcome, however, Adventists should avoid arguing that our interpretation can be vindicated by an "American tradition" of separation of church and state.

*Unfortunately, the Supreme Court in a variety of cases failed to uphold "civil rights" for African Americans, leading to "Jim Crow" laws and second-class citizenship for many decades. Most notoriously, in Plessy v. Furgeson the Supreme Court upheld "separate, but equal" segregation laws, a ruling that went unchanged for some 60 years.

** "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Richard Worley is a faculty member at Pacific Adventist University in Papua, New Guinea. His e-mail is rworley@pau.au.pg