Parallel Societies: A Comparative Study on Church-State Relations

Many recent hot topic news headlines claim that attacks are being made on the separation of Church and state in the United States. These articles specifically list the Catholic Church as a chief culprit due to the religious beliefs of the governmental officials in question. An in-depth understanding of each institution's position on the doctrine of separation of Church and state is developed along with the foundational motivations of each position to better understand the general subject matter, where afterwards the validity of the claims can be determined. The historical American perspective on Church-state separation is developed from the combined thought of James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, where their thoughts are shown to have originated from John Locke. Next, the viewpoint of the Catholic Church is developed from a brief summary of historical Church-state relations and topical Papal encyclicals. Finally, each institutions’ position is motivated by their respective underlying foundations in the nature of man.