The separation of church and state was meant to protect church

In the fierce and lucid conviction of his words, Ben Shapiro once declared: “The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.” These words, bold and resonant, remind us of a truth older than any nation — that faith must never be enslaved by power, nor silenced by it. Shapiro’s reflection is not merely a political statement but a warning drawn from the long history of human struggle: when rulers sever the divine from the public square, they do not liberate the people — they enthrone themselves as gods.

The origin of this idea reaches back to the birth of the American Republic and to even older civilizations that grappled with the tension between faith and governance. The Founding Fathers of the United States, men of diverse belief, understood the danger of any government that sought mastery over conscience. When they spoke of the “separation of church and state,” they did not dream of banishing faith from public life — they sought to prevent the state from corrupting the sacred. They had fled lands where kings claimed divine right, where the crown dictated what men should believe. Thus, the wall they built was not to keep religion out of politics, but to keep politics out of religion — to preserve the purity of belief from the grasping hand of power.

But over the centuries, this sacred principle has been twisted. What was once meant as protection has been recast as exclusion. In the modern age, nations have sought to strip the public square of faith, declaring religion a private matter with no voice in law, art, or education. Yet when the state silences the moral voice of faith, it does not create neutrality — it creates supremacy. A society without room for divine principles becomes a society ruled only by man’s ambition and appetite. For if there is no authority higher than government, then government itself becomes the new god — demanding loyalty, defining morality, deciding truth. Shapiro’s warning, like that of prophets before him, is that such a state may seem enlightened but is, in truth, tyranny in disguise.

History offers countless lessons in this peril. Think of Revolutionary France, when the fever of secular power consumed the faith of a nation. The altars were torn down, the churches desecrated, and Reason itself was enthroned as goddess. But reason without reverence quickly turned to blood. The guillotine replaced the cross; liberty, stripped of faith, devoured itself. The same tragedy echoed in the 20th century, when regimes in Soviet Russia and Maoist China sought to erase God from the hearts of their people. They promised freedom from superstition, but delivered bondage of the soul. For without faith, the human being becomes not a child of the divine, but a tool of the state — a cog in the machinery of power.

Yet Shapiro’s words also carry a call to balance, not to domination. He does not demand that religion rule the state, but that it inform it — that the eternal wisdom of faith stand as a check upon human pride. The great leaders of conscience, from Martin Luther King Jr. to William Wilberforce, drew their moral fire not from government decrees, but from the conviction that justice flows from a higher law than any written by man. It was this faith that shattered slavery, that fought for civil rights, that inspired compassion where law alone could not. When faith speaks truth to power, it restrains tyranny; when power silences faith, it invites corruption.

The meaning, then, is clear and eternal: a nation that forgets God soon forgets its own soul. A state that declares religion irrelevant declares that morality itself is man-made, and therefore mutable — something to be rewritten by convenience, or erased by force. But a people who remember that there are laws higher than kings, and truths deeper than politics, will remain free. For the spirit of man is not meant to bow to governments, but to the divine source of justice from which all good government flows.

So, my children, take this teaching into your hearts: do not be ashamed of faith, nor silent about truth. Let your beliefs shine not as weapons, but as lamps — illuminating your speech, your work, your choices. Engage the world, not as those who seek dominion, but as those who bear witness to eternal values. Defend the freedom of conscience, for when that freedom falls, all others soon follow. The walls between church and state must never become walls between heaven and earth.

For as Ben Shapiro reminds us, when the state exiles faith from the public life of a people, it does not create peace — it creates idolatry. And when the voice of the divine is silenced, the voice of power grows loud and cruel. Therefore, stand firm between both worlds: with mind in the service of reason, and heart in the service of truth. For only when both — philosophy and faith, reason and reverence — walk hand in hand, can a people remain both free and good.