Separation of Church/State Has Always Been Good for Religion
Ed Simon
Religion & Politics
July 4, 2022
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
During the autumn of 1831, as the United States was in the midst of fervent religious revivals known as the Second Great Awakening, the French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville attended a service at a Quaker meeting house in Philadelphia. Tocqueville was initially confused by the experience, writing in his classic 1835 account Democracy in America how he was unsettled by the silent gathering of women and men in a plain church. He finally said to a worshiper next to him, “I wanted to attend a divine service, but you seem to have conducted me to an assembly of deaf-mutes.” He was then gently corrected by the Quaker, who answered: “Dost thou not see that each one of us is waiting for the Holy Spirit to illuminate him? Learn to moderate thy impatience in a holy place.”
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